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Photo Kaimi Lum
Aly Albertson gets to handle one of the baby diamondbacks released Thursday at Fox Island. |
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Photo Kaimi Lum
Young diamondback treks off into the unknown. The device glued to its back is a radio transmitter. |
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Baby turtles forge into the wild
Banner Daily Update posted Mon. June 25
By Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
WELLFLEET — No one really knows what goes on in the life of a baby turtle during its first few years out in the wild, but the turtles released Thursday into the salt marsh at Fox Island may help biologists fill in the blanks. The Tootsie-Roll-sized radio transmitters glued to their shells will allow them to be tracked using a gigantic antenna.
The seven or eight young diamondbacks, “headstarted” in a lab at Wheaton College, were dispatched at their original nest site by biology professor Barbara Brennessel, who was assisted by an intern and a clutch of small children from the neighborhood.
“It’s always a joyful event,” says Brennessel, who has participated in previous turtle releases in Wellfleet. The turtles seemed enthusiastic, too, dashing off, if a turtle can be said to dash, into the cover of the green dune grass as soon as they were dropped into the sand. Alexandria Albertson, a summer resident and aspiring marine biologist who had come to see the turtle send-off with her brother Marcus and her mother Ellen, personally freed most of the turtles.
Dr. Brennessel works with Don Lewis, the “Turtleman of Wellfleet Bay,” and Bob Prescott, director of Mass. Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, to protect and manage the diamondbacks. Diamondbacks are listed as a “threatened species.” They’re also considered a bellwether species, providing clues to the health of the estuary in which they live year-round. If significant die-offs occur among the hardy diamondbacks — a species which can adapt to huge swings in the tide, have damaging run-ins with predators, boats and automobiles but still survive, and cope with other pressures on the environment — you know something is amiss in the salt marsh system.
Brennessel says diamondback activity around Fox Island and Lieutenant Island has shown a decline in recent years.
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Waterfront park renovation scaled back
Portuguese Festival draws big crowds
Free Internet access discussed by EDC
Levin lecture series begins with Pujol
A whale of a lab opening
The weekend openings are gearing up
Film Festival wrap-up
Sewer construction update
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Jun 21st, 2007