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ScribeBy:
Bruce Smith of Associated Press
Originally Published in: The Daytona Beach News-Journal
Originally Published on: 6/14/03
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A century ago it was turtle soup. Now crab traps may be a one reason for the continued decline of diamondback terrapins, according to a researcher who has studied the turtles along the South Carolina coast for 20 years.
"Clearly the numbers are down from when I started working with them in the early 1980s," says Whit Gibbons, a senior ecologist and professor at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory near Aiken.
He was out again this week in the creeks of Kiawah Island taking a turtle survey.
"We would take a seine and, 15 or 20 years ago, capture 15 or 20 at a time," he said. "Now we might get one or two."
Since 1983, Gibbons and fellow researchers have tagged 1,600 terrapins in four creeks near the island. They found none in one creek this week and caught only 30 in the others, nearly all of which were tagged in previous years.
That means new turtles are not moving into the creeks or the young are not growing to the point they can enter the creeks, Gibbons said.
Diamondback terrapins once swarmed coastal marshes from New England to Texas. They were almost wiped out in the early 1900s because of demand for turtle soup when a fishermen could get $8 a turtle.
A drop in demand for the soup and laws restricting harvesting helped the turtles come back, but research shows they are again in decline.
South Carolina allows taking terrapins for personal consumption but not commercial harvest, says Stephen Bennett of the state Department of Natural Resources.
A permit is required and the state has not issued any since the regulation took effect two years ago, says department biologist Meg Hoyle.
Crab traps -- some of them so-called ghost traps that have been abandoned -- claim many terrapins, Gibbons says. Female turtles crawl in, are followed by males, and neither can get out.
In one trap off Kiawah Island last year, 23 dead terrapins were found, said Hoyle. One solution, she says, is to change the openings so crabs can get in but turtles can't.
A College of Charleston researcher has tracked terrapins using radio transmitters attached to their shells. David Owens, director of the college's graduate biology program, has studied terrapin nesting habits in Charleston Harbor.
Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening last year announced a state survey of the terrapin population and nesting areas. Maryland already encourages crab traps with turtle excluders.
Last year in Texas, more than 8,000 abandoned crab traps were cleared from along the state's 400-mile coastline.
Another reason for the decline could be loss of nesting habitat and changes in the water along the South Carolina coast. "It is not that there is one culprit out there," Gibbons says.
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