Good Luck, Poachers!

Good Luck, Poachers!

This week our focus was on wood turtles and Professor McNeil took us to a couple of streams were the turtles are located so that we could try to find some. We searched along a one kilometer stretch of each stream and ‘marked up’ the turtles that we found. To mark up means to measure the length, width, and height of the turtle’s shell, along with finding the weight. To the find the weight of a turtle, it was placed into a disheveled Ziploc bag that was attached to a spring weight. I learned that it is almost impossible to sex juvenile turtles because they haven’t fully developed their sex organs and do not display physical characteristics that correlate with being male or female (fun fact: males have concave plastrons). If momma turtles name their hatchlings, do they all receive a unisex name?

When I said that we focused on the wood turtles I meant that we gave them our full undivided attention. Wood turtles are not easy critters to find! For all I know, I might have been stepping right on top of a shell, but confused it for a rock. For the most part the visibility of the streams were clear. In some cases when they weren’t we had buckets with clear bottoms to look through the water with. Even so, I don’t know how many turtles I may have missed!

Assuming we were able to find most of the turtles, the first stream contained more turtles than the second stream. We found about eight at the first stream and three at the second stream. Towards the end of the day, a few of us were shown a secret area where we were bound to find some turtles. I ended up finding two after I was forced to shove my hand underneath the side of bank. I still can’t believe that I have all ten of my fingers after that experience.

As if losing fingers was a big enough fear, other students were getting soaked. There were many students who had to wade through the water with beat up waders and they were wet and cold for most of the day because of it. If anything, working with wood turtles has reinforced my decision to stay away from field work as a future job. One of the wood turtle interns told us that they have to survey during February. I can’t imagine being in a stream during that time of the year, let alone sticking my hands into the water.

Good luck, wood turtle poachers. There is a team of courageous individuals out in Virginia willing to fight for the lives of wood turtles. (Even better luck to you if you can find them!)