Stone Harbor Elementary Releases Head Started Terps

[Todd Stockwell]

Todd Stockwell

June 9, 2004 at 9:43 am #19754

http://www.courierpostonline.com/news/southjersey/m060904q.htm Efforts aid diamondback terrapins Wednesday, June 9, 2004Development poses challenge to turtles By LAWRENCE HAJNA Courier-Post Staff STONE HARBOR One after another, the kindergarten students walked to the edge of a marsh behind the Wetlands Institute on Tuesday and placed baby diamondback terrapins into the water. Many of the turtles poked their slender necks, like periscopes, out of the water and tried to swim back to the muddy shore. But with a gentle nudge from institute interns, college students who help out every summer, the turtles turned back and disappeared in the water. The turtle release is an annual event at the nonprofit Wetlands Institute, which has been working since 1989 to protect the diamondback terrapin, the only turtle that lives exclusively in the brackish water of coastal marshes. Roberta Dean, a kindergarten teacher at the Stone Harbor Elementary School, has been bringing her pupils to release turtles almost since the institute’s conservation efforts began. “It lets them know they can help, they can do something to help and it’s an animal in our back yard,” Dean said. Found from Cape Cod to the Gulf of Mexico, the diamondback terrapin is not listed as threatened or endangered. New Jersey, however, considers the turtle a species of concern because of extensive development along the barrier islands and marshes. This is the time of year when pregnant female terrapins are most vulnerable to being struck by cars. More than 600 are killed in Cape May and Atlantic counties each year as they seek places to lay their eggs, said Roger Wood, the institute’s research director. ADVERTISEMENT – CLICK TO ENLARGE OR VISIT WEBSITE Featured Advertisers All Shore Audubon Savings Audubon Savings Ballyhugh Oskar Huber Advertise with us! They are particularly vulnerable along the many causeways that link the barrier islands to the mainland. This is some of the only habitat left where they can lay eggs above the high-tide line. “What they used to do before the resorts were built on the islands is come out of the salt marsh, nest on dunes and then come back to the salt marsh,” Wood said. “After the islands got developed, there weren’t any more dunes and the marsh side was built up with bulkheads so they didn’t have any place left to nest. That’s why they’re all over the roads.” The institute this spring put up a long erosion control-type fence along Landis Avenue in Sea Isle City to see if this will reduce the number of turtles killed trying to travel between marshes and ocean beaches there. As troublesome as the road kills are, they don’t compare to the thousands that die each year in commercial crab traps, Wood said. Since the late 1990s, the state has required commercial crabbers use “turtle excluder devices” to reduce these deaths. Developed by the institute, the devices are simple plastic or metal collars placed around the funnel-like openings of wire crab pots that allow crabs in but are too narrow for adult turtles. At least 15,000 terrapins drowned in these traps each year in New Jersey before the excluders were required, Wood said. There have been no studies to determine how effective the excluders have been. Each spring, during the mating season, dozens of Wetlands Institute interns patrol the causeways and barrier islands looking for injured or dead turtles. Frequently, eggs can be extracted and hatched in labs, where baby terrapins are raised for releases like the one Tuesday. The Stone Harbor Elementary School kindergarten class raised $100 to pay for food needed to raise the turtles by baking turtle-shaped sugar cookies and selling them to classmates throughout the school year. The first to release a turtle was Dane Ossichak, 6, who waded into the water in his shoes and socks while holding a small brownish-green turtle. “Gooood,” he said, almost singing out the word when asked how it felt to release the turtle. “He tried to swim back.” Reach Lawrence Hajna at (856)486-2466 or lhajna@… Thank you for visiting http://www.courierpostonline.com Do you Yahoo!?Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger

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