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By JOHN
LEANING _files/cleartab.gif){kind=spacer} The marsh is wild and desolate. Grasses are now brown and bent
over, hiding tiny rivulets where the turtle carcasses were left by the
tides. "The turtles are very difficult to find, almost impossible to
the untrained eye," Lewis said as he walked through one area where he's
found carcasses in the past. Lewis makes his patrols during low tide, the only time the
interior of the marsh and the deeper creeks are accessible. "It's a treacherous terrain. Now that the marsh has thawed, you
can fall into pockets. I've literally had to claw myself out," Lewis said,
noting that he always brings his cell phone with him, just in
case. After the turtle patrols, he returns coated in black, smelly
ooze from the marsh. He says his wife bans him from the house until he
sheds his fetid clothes. The former National Security Agency official estimates he spends
25 hours a week on the patrols, and another 25 hours working the numbers
and locations on his computer. Robert Prescott, executive director of the Massachusetts Audubon
Society's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, said, "I wish we had an
answer. We just can't seem to figure it out. But a lot of turtles keep
popping up in an advanced state of decomposition." The site-specific nature of the turtle deaths tends to eliminate
natural causes, French said. If it were weather, there would have been
dead turtles all over the marsh system. None of the turtle shells, called carapaces, showed any signs of
scratching or gnawing by predators. Working backward from the date the carcasses were first
discovered, naturalists believe the turtles died sometime in late October
or November, because the carcasses had time to start decomposing before
freezing weather arrived. Analysis of the remains is almost impossible
because of the advanced decomposition. Lewis spotted a live turtle Oct. 26, which he uses as the last
date the turtles were moving before going into the muddy creek bottom to
hibernate for the winter. The first dead diamondback appeared Dec. 7. "It's a day that will live in infamy for turtle research," Lewis
said, adapting the line from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's address to
Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, when the United States declared war on Japan
after its Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor. Since then the turtle carcasses have appeared with some
regularity in the same areas of the marsh. The numbers peaked March 11, 12
and 13, when Lewis picked up 24 dead turtles. Young, old, male, female,
the entire range of the diamondback terrapin population started to become
mortality statistics in records Lewis meticulously keeps on his
computer. Prescott said that every year naturalists customarily find a
half-dozen or so dead turtles, killed by exposure as ice in the creeks
shifts, moving the water channels and uncovering the hibernating
turtles. But this was much more than the normal ice kill. Prescott and others think the deaths might have been
inadvertently caused by shellfishermen dragging for oysters. The drag
could have scraped the hibernating turtles from the bottom, and they could
have died from related injuries or exposure. Since the turtles clump
together to hibernate, one tow of the drag could do a lot of damage, he
said. Prescott and others have no hard evidence, but he does plan to
meet with shellfish constable Richard Dickey and the town's shellfish
advisory committee to discuss the matter. Proposals could include a ban on
dragging in the marsh when the turtles are hibernating. "We don't need to do anything immediately. The best thing is to
talk, and see what they think is a solution," Prescott said. French pointed out that the unusually high number of dead
turtles has not been seen before. Even without the more intense monitoring
Lewis has given the habitat since last July, French said, such high
numbers would have been noted in the past. The fatalities, he said, were "probably the result of an unusual
activity." "It's a mystery, and that's part of the interest," said
Audubon's Prescott. If it is determined that the turtle deaths were caused by human
activity, steps can be taken to prevent a recurrence. "But if it's from natural causes, there is not much we can do,"
Prescott said. "It's a tragedy to find the dead turtles, but if it can help us
save the diamondback terrapin species, then it's God's work," Lewis
said. |
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