NESTING DIAMOND-BACKS

     Over several years, I've seen female box turtles and female snapping turtles laying eggs in holes they dug with their hind legs in loose soil in June.  And yesterday, June 5, 2024, for the first time, by a live camera on an osprey nest and our computer screen, I saw several female diamond-backed terrapins digging holes and laying eggs in a vacant lot of sand in a housing development on Long Beach Island, a barrier island between Barnegat Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  I saw some female diamond-backs plodding across a salt marsh to get to that sandy lot to lay eggs while other females were trudging back to the bay after laying their eggs.  It was an arduous, dangerous venture for all those terrapins because they had to cross a road to get to their spawning grounds.

     Interestingly, a few women were helping terrapins cross the road, both ways.  And when a female terrapin was done digging with her back legs and laying eggs, one of the women placed an open, metal cage over the sand-covered eggs to keep them safe from animals, and people.  On June 5 I saw about 20 of those cages on the sandy lot, but I knew there would be more nests of terrapins through June because I saw a photograph of about 40 of those cages that was taken in August of 2023.  Young terrapins hatch in August or September.  And some hatchlings stay dormant in the sand through their first winter.  Hatchlings are probably helped across the road so they can get to Barnegat Bay.

     There are beaches along Barnegat Bay these terrapins could use more conveniently.  But those beaches flood a lot, which would drown terrapin embryos.  Female terrapins avoid those beaches.

     I read that if female terrapins are disturbed while digging nest holes, they will abandon them and move on.  But the terrapins I saw on June 5 were not disturbed by the women near the turtle nests.  I think those female terrapins spawned there before and are use to be handled by the helping women.   

     Diamond-backed terrapins live in the brackish water of harbors, estuaries, tidal creeks and salt marshes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Massachusets to Texas.  That is a long, narrow habitat where they consume mollusks, fish, aquatic worms and carrion.    

     Several locations, including The Wetlands Institute and Margate City in New Jersey, a nature park just north of Route 50 on Kent Island on the east shore of Chesapeake Bay, the Port Mahon/Little Creek areas along Delaware Bay in Delaware and other places are dedicated to helping diamond-backed terrapins survive as a species.  People from those agencies, and other folks, rescue terrapins, remove them from roads, hatch viable eggs retrieved from road-killed terrapins, put cages over terrapin nests in salt marshes and do other things to decrease terrapin fatalities and promote awareness of terrapins' plight and increase their numbers.  

     Still terrapins are declining in numbers because of habitat loss, road kills, hit by speeding boats and increased predation by fur-bearers, herons, gulls, crows and other creatures.  I am glad that agencies and private individuals, including those women on Long Beach Island in New Jersey, are helping terrapins thrive as an interesting species in brackish water.       

     

  

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