5

Tracking Turtles

It is the middle of an early summer night, I am by myself under the majestic canopy of North America’s last old-growth cypress swamp, sweating as I stand stock-still behind a tupelo tree, surrounded by several species of venomous snakes and alligators and other unknown bitey things.

I wonder, Did I remember to tell anyone I’d be out here tonight? Is my cell phone fully charged? How far am I from my truck?

Wait, I’ve just had a déjà vu… . I’ve been in a situation like this before, but swap the swamp for the ancient and smooth rock barrens of the Canadian Shield and the alligators for black bears, add lightning, and insert a canoe as my mode of transportation.

I wondered then, Can I get back to my canoe from here, and how close is that bear I hear gruffling?

These are the memorable moments of radio tracking gravid female Spotted Turtles (Clemmys guttata) to find their nests in South Carolina and Ontario during my doctoral and master’s fieldwork, respectively.

The Spotted Turtle is a globally endangered species whose populations are declining because of habitat loss and modification, road mortality, and illegal collection for the pet trade. They are really pretty, charismatic little turtles—their black shells adorned with a constellation of yellow polka dots—and so they are highly desirable as pets. Conservation of the species requires describing and protecting the wild habitats they need to complete their life cycle, and this requires fieldwork. Protection also requires keeping secret the locations of field research sites (https://theconversation.com/the-illegal-turtle-trade-why-i-keep-secrets-85805).

I became interested in Spotted Turtles while working toward my undergraduate degree. I taught biology for a summer job at a canoe-tripping camp for kids in eastern Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada. At the camp, I found old data sheets reporting information about individual Spotted Turtles captured around the camp by campers and staff; it was like opening a map to a treasure chest! And then I found those exact same turtles when I took kids out on programs. It was like finding the actual treasure! Previous camp staff had individually marked all the captured turtles by filing different combinations of small triangular notches around the outside edge of their shells, so I knew who was who. Finding these turtles made me ask all kinds of questions about them, and I turned that curiosity into my master’s thesis research studying the spatial ecology and life history of northern Spotted Turtles.

Like all new graduate students, I hit the scientific literature to see what we already knew about Spotted Turtles, with specific attention on their reproductive behavior. All the previous work was focused on populations in habitats very different from the rock barrens and shrub swamps of Georgian Bay, so I was going in blind. From the literature, I did know that it was unlikely they would nest during the daytime, so I needed to locate them at night. I outfitted gravid females with radio transmitters and tracked their movements to nesting sites. On that one particular night referenced above, I made the surprising discovery that the turtles nested on rock outcrops. Yes, I said rock.

I was tracking female ID number 2 (later named Mom for reasons that will shortly become obvious). She was gravid and ready to pop; she was full up to her armpits with shelled eggs, white elliptical jewels of potential. During the day I had located her in a wetland at the base of a rock outcrop. That night, her radio transmitter signal was coming from up on top of the rock. I thought, Oh no, she’s been eaten by a predator who dragged her up onto land! I followed the signal, thinking I’d find her carcass, and then stood befuddled on the top of the rock barren, cursing the rock itself and the rain for making the telemetry signal bounce around so that I couldn’t locate her. In frustration and defeat, I dropped my chin down to my chest, and lo and behold, between my feet, revealed in the luminescence of a lightning flash, the lichen wiggled. There she was! Wearing the lichen on her shell like camo on an army helmet as she excavated a nest chamber in a shallow pocket of soil in a crack on the rock. Yes, I said rock.

Now I knew what to look for. All the Spotted Turtles I tracked during my master’s fieldwork laid their eggs on rock outcrops. And subsequent fieldwork revealed that all the freshwater turtles we and others studied in Georgian Bay also made their nests on the rock barrens. These heat-holding rocks, with their thermal inertia, are egg-incubating hotspots, ideal for embryogenesis in a place with short and cool summers.

So then I wanted to know where Spotted Turtles in warmer places without rock barrens would lay their eggs, which brings me back to the cypress swamp full of cottonmouths and other venomous snakes in South Carolina. When I was standing behind that tupelo tree, I was quietly watching a gravid female Spotted Turtle. She was standing on the top of a large fallen cypress log, and I was again befuddled. I wrote in my field journal, What is she doing? Moonlight basking? Well, it turns out she was nesting. She laid her eggs in the rotten wood and moss on top of the log. Another surprise! Most of the other female Spotted Turtles tracked during my doctoral field research also nested in rotten woody debris within the swamp forest, but not all of them were on the tops of logs like this moonlight basker. My guess is that in warm places, turtles lay their eggs in shady spots to prevent the eggs from overcooking, which could cause deformities or even embryo mortality. These canopied swamp forests are egg-incubating cooling spots, ideal for embryogenesis in a place where summers are long and hot.

I have been working on Spotted Turtle ecology and conservation for three decades now and have had the opportunity to visit other field research sites in Canada and the United States to survey for Spotted Turtles. I am amazed by the diversity of habitats in which the species lives, despite its at-risk status. Over those years, I have observed changes and declines in turtle populations, and my life has also changed, including having a family. My daughter has accompanied me to some of these field research sites.

Spotted Turtles are typically one of the first turtle species to emerge in spring, which means surveys in northern locations often happen when there is still ice and snow skirting the hibernation wetlands. On one memorable early spring survey, my daughter, who was only seven years old at the time, joined the research team, outfitted in two pairs of my wool socks and my hip waders, which were chest waders on her small frame. She valiantly attempted to find turtles, not getting discouraged by her lack of captures. She was content eating snacks of Goldfish crackers and pepperettes during the pauses when we sat on the rock outcrop to measure and weigh the captured turtles—that is, until a few hours into the fieldwork day when she got a soaker, a Canadian term for when you take water into your boots or waders. The water was only 4 °C. No amount of wool can keep little feet inside hip waders warm for long at that temperature. So as she stood shivering in sopping stocking feet on the rock, dumping the frigid water from her waders, she very calmly said, Mommy, I think I’m ready to go home now. And so we did, and she slept in the backseat of the car for the whole drive home. Sharing these field research experiences with my daughter is fulfilling on a personal level but also on a broader scale because it helps curb the contemporary childhood problem of nature deficit disorder.

I learned from radio tracking Spotted Turtles in two geographically distant places that fieldwork is hard, even grueling, but so rewarding. To be that intimate with, and embedded in, the natural world is an unparalleled opportunity and experience for building empathy for the slimy and scaly creatures with whom we share this planet. It’s hard to love something you don’t understand. So get outside, learn, and fall in love.