Peeking out at her new habitat

One Tuesday the staff and volunteers of the NMLC gathered for a joyous event! The release of Eleanor the Diamondback Terrapin. Eleanor came to the NMLC at the beginning of August after being kept as a pet for about a year. Diamondback Terrapins are a protected species in Massachusetts and cannot be held as pets. Her “owners” found her as a hatchling with a small foot injury and didn’t think she could make it in the wild. Once finding out Diamondback Terrapins are protected they handed the turtle to the NMLC. Luckily they had taken good care of the turtle and she was healthy.

Eleanor has spent the last few month at the NMLC preparing for a life back in the wild. She was weaned off the commercial turtle food she had been consuming and introduced to natural diet items, and slowly acclimated to increased salinity. She was deemed ready for release last week by our veterinarian and on Tuesday she was returned to her original home in Wareham, MA.

Ready for release

An entourage of about 15 people came to send Eleanor off. She was released into an estuarine habitat very close to where she was originally found just over a year ago. Eleanor was anxious to explore her new environment  checking out her surroundings as she quickly left us behind.  Eleanor’s story had a happy ending, but she is a great reminder that wild animals should be left in the wild. If you find an animal you believe to be injured be sure to contact your local wildlife rehabilitation facility where the staff and volunteers are trained to properly care for wild animals. To read more about Eleanor’s stay at the NMLC please read our previous blog posts Introducing Eleanor and Preparing Eleanor for Release, and for additional pictures and video of the release please visit our Facebook page.

Off exploring her new habitat.

Eleanor basking in her habitat at NMLC.

We have enjoyed caring for the Diamondback Terrapin Eleanor these last few months, but it is time for us to say good bye and send her back where she belongs. Eleanor was brought to the National Marine Life Center back at the beginning of August after being held as a pet for approximately one year. NMLC took on the task of converting her to a natural diet and proper salinity and with the approval of our veterinarian and state officials she has been deemed ready for release. This week the staff and volunteers at the NMLC have been busy preparing for her send off.

Inserting Eleanor's Pit Tag

Eleanor received an exam on Tuesday morning including a pre-release blood draw. We received her results on Wednesday and all of her blood parameters were within normal range. The final step in her preparation was the insertion of a pit tag. A pit tag is what a veterinarian would use to “micro chip” your cat or dog. It is a tiny transmitter that is implanted under the skin to uniquely identify an individual animal. Rehabilitation hospitals and scientific researchers use these tags on a variety of species so that they can keep track of the individual animals they are treating or studying. The tag is about the size of a grain of rice and when scanned with a pit tag reader the number that appears can then be linked to that particular animal. If Eleanor ever ends up in another rehabilitation hospital or is scanned by a researcher they will be able to trace her pit tag number back to the NMLC.

Scanning Eleanor's Pit Tag After Implantation

So now that all the preparations have been made it is time for her release. We have scheduled her departure for Tuesday October 4th. Staff and volunteers will be meeting at the NMLC at 10:30 am to travel to the release site. Eleanor will be release in Wareham, Ma very close to where she was reportedly discovered as a hatchling. If you would like to attend her release please email Kate Shaffer at kshaffer@nmlc.org.  For more pictures of Eleanor’s pit tagging procedure please visit our Facebook page.

Diamondback Terrapin Eleanor

We would like you to meet Eleanor the newest patient at the National Marine Life Center. Eleanor is a Diamondback Terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) who arrived at the Center on Tuesday August 9th. She was found in Wareham last summer as a hatchling by some visitors who took her home as a pet. Luckily they were advised recently that Diamondback Terrapins are a threatened species and that it is illegal to keep them as pets. Her “owners”  did the right thing in delivering her to a rehabilitation center like the NMLC. She is the same species as Teanna who was rehabilitated at the NMLC this past winter.

Diamondback terrapins are a brackish water turtle that live in local salt marshes and estuaries. Although they can survive at length in fresh water, their ideal habitat is slightly salty! As a “pet” Eleanor was being fed a turtle food called Reptomin and being kept in a fresh water tank. As with Teanna this turtle will need to reintroduced to a natural diet and habitat parameters. In the wild they mostly feed on clams, shrimp, crabs, snails, and small fish.

A great lesson can be learned by Eleanor’s arrival at the NMLC! It is very important to leave wild animals in the wild! If you find an animal you believe to be injured or unable to care for itself please contact your local wildlife rehabilitator. It is always best to purchase pets at a pet store and to research the species of animal you wish to adopt. There are many different species of turtles with varying dietary and habitat  requirements.  Also, as in Eleanor’s case you may not be aware that an animal is a threatened species and protected by federal and state law. Diamondback Terrapins are protected and regulated by MassWildlife.  They have been notified of her arrival at the National Marine Life Center and will oversee her stay here.  She will hopefully have a quick smooth transition and be released back into the estuary where she belongs very soon!

Come see Eleanor during our patient update on Mondays & Fridays at 10am!

The past two weeks at the National Marine Life Center have been busy and full of promise. Just as the few days of sun we received were a hint of what the summer has in store, all that has gone on at NMLC recently has shown just how exciting this summer will be as things continue to heat up.

Teanna’s release in Wellfleet last Thursday was very successful. She did not hesitate at all to jump right into a marsh close to where she got herself stuck in a window well last fall, and it was great to see her back where she belongs. Unlike the red-bellied cooters released in May, Teanna was in need of rehabilitation from NMLC when she arrived in January, making this release a bit more special. She would not be swimming around the marshes of Wellfleet today without the help of the staff and volunteers at NMLC. As everything moves forward with the new hospital and we start getting patients in, more successful rehabilitations and releases of turtles, seals, and other marine animals are sure to follow.

The National Marine Life Center has been getting the word out about our goals to families from all across the cape in

The Discovery Center at NMLC

the past two weeks, and it has been great to see how much interest there is in the center. Last weekend we had an informational booth set up at the Sandwich Women’s Club “Touch a Truck” in Sandwich and this weekend we participated in the Cape Cod Maritime Museum’s Maritime Festival in Hyannis. Both events were great opportunities to give people an idea of what kind of work we do at NMLC. Kids and parents alike were fascinated by the preserved turtles and various whale artifacts that we brought along, and the marine animal arts and crafts were a big hit. Before we know it the Discovery Center at NMLC will be filled with families on summer vacation and kids excited to learn about all sorts of marine animals.

Though we may run into a couple more rainy days before it gets here, a bright summer certainly lies ahead at the National Marine Life Center!

Teanna during rounds

It’s actually a really cool program; State officials go to known nesting areas for the RBC’s and collect about 1/2 the eggs in the nest. They distribute the eggs to different organizations and schools to raise the hatchlings from about the size of a quarter to at least the minimum required size by the state.This program gives these endangered turtles a”head-start” allowing them to grow to a size where they will be less effected by predation. Normally these turtles in the wild would burrow into the mud during the cold months and stay almost in a dormant stage until the weather is warm enough for them to survive. But because they are dormant they aren’t able to eat and grow during this period to be large enough defend themselves from predators.

Anyway, back to this week’s events, we got the run down of how to change the water in the different turtle tanks. After we had shadowed the other volunteers, Kate informed all of the interns that a baby bird had fallen out of  its nest which was too high up for it to be placed back in the nest so both Brie and Brian took the bird to the Cape Wildlife facility in Barnstable, MA. When they got back we helped out with the Daisy Girl Scout troops that came to the Discovery Center. Kathy explained all of the exhibits to the children. She talked about the differences between baleen and toothed whales, as well as the differences between seals and sea lions; dolphins, porpoises etc. The girls and their troop leaders then got the grand tour of the facility and the hospital. Then we helped out with some of the educational activities, which consisted of the blubber-glove and the tooth vs. baleen whales.

Tuesday: I came in early to observe the Mass Maritime Cadets doing the water quality. They collected samples from all the different tanks and the pump house. Then we watched rounds that were preformed on the different patients; Catch 22, Teanna, and the Hatchlings. It was cool to watch the different procedures, and Rogers the active veterinarian at the facility was very good at explaining everything that he was doing as well as answering  questions we had about what was going on.

Kate, Andy and Rogers doing rounds, checking to see the Catch 22 is in good health. (Photo Credit: Brie Myre)

Wednesday: We collected different organisms to put in the critter tank in the Discovery Center. I was definitely in my element, this is one of my FAVORITE things to do; just go along the beach picking up shells and difference marine organisms and identifying them. We started off at Onset Beach, we spent a good two or three hours just combing the beach looking at everything. We collected a ton of periwinkles, quahogs, whelks, mussels (blue and ribbed), hermit crabs, Asian Shore Crabs, as well as different types of shrimp that were just swimming in the water. We also collected a lot of shells to put in the beachcombing table in the Discovery Center  like scallop shells, jingle shells, slipper snail shells, pieces of broken whelk shells, etc. We also saw the broken remains of horseshoe crabs which was really cool, but it would have been better if we found live ones. After we felt we had collected a sufficient amount of organisms we headed back to the center but along the  way we stopped near Mass Maritime to check out the differences between the  two beaches. We found a few more interesting species at this beach. In the seaweed I discovered a green crab that was a really good size and decided to add him to our other friends for the critter tank. We also found a live moon snail and a TON of fish. After chasing after the fish for what seemed like forever, we just stood still and they started to ram themselves into our feet. We collected the Fish by the net full but decided to only take three of these mysterious tiny fish back to the tank.

Collecting Shrimp at Onset Beach (Photo Credit: Brie Myre)

Thursday: This was a sad and exciting day. We had to turn in the eight Red-Bellied Cooters back to the state. There was a meeting to discuss how the process was working, the different approaches that worked and didn’t to help with the program for next year. It was very educational and a good learning experience, a lot of these different organizations and schools had different ways of taking care of their Cooters, but at the same time there were similarities. It was really interesting to see how the turtle hatchlings were “cataloged” is the best way to describe the process. It was an assembly line, naming off the facility where the turtle was raised, each turtle was assigned a number which was filed into their scutes (the scales on the turtle’s shell are called scutes). There is a specific numbering system, the shell is split up into four different quadrants (1000′s, 100′s, 10′s and 1′s) and each scute represents a certain number.

The turtle marking process, putting notches in certain scutes so the Cooters will be identifiable in the wild

For example, if a turtle was assigned the number 1395, then the top right quadrant was the thousand’s place so you mark the first scute, then in the top left quadrant the third scute (moving in a counter-clockwise direction) is marked. The next number is a little trickier because in each section there are only about five scutes so 9 would be represented by marking the 4th and 5th scute, and finally the 5th scute is marked in the bottom right quadrant. Then the turtle is passed down the line to get its measurements taken, the length of both the plastron ( the underside of the turtle shell) and the carapace (the top side of the shell) was taken from notch to notch. The weight was then recorded and then they were placed in the appropriate box to be released. This process was carried out for all of the turtles that were dropped off that day and the data would be saved and recorded to be given back to the state to place in their records. Unfortunately when we turned in our turtles we received three deformed turtles. Their shells were majorly deformed into almost mountainous shapes in a pattern called pyramiding. As we later found when Rogers was doing the patient rounds, the turtles suffer from metabolic bone disease which is most likely caused by malnutrition and just abnormal diet, not receiving the nutrients and calcium levels that are needed for proper growth and bone formation. The poor little guys could barely move and swim, and their back legs seem like there weren’t even any bones formed, just Jello. But after we cleaned out the tank from the previous hatchlings, we set up the tank for out three new patients. Then later that night we had our annual meeting  for the National Marine Life Center. We got to see the behind the scenes people that keep this place up and running in addition to Kathy, Kate and Adele.

Friday: The Big Day! We drove up to see the release of the Cooters. There were so many people there who had either helped raise these turtles or just wanted to participate in the release. It was very exciting to see so many people passionate about gaining information about this endangered species as well as seeing them go on their way into the wild to hopefully increase the population and hopefully get this species off the Endangered Species List. I did hear that a possible reason that the hatchlings were released in Hanson instead of Middleboro this year  was because the capacity for the Cooters had been reached for that particular area. Which to me sounds like a very good thing, meaning that there are enough turtles in that area so we can move on to try and boost the population in different areas since the previous one is sustainable. It was cute to see all of the little kids helping with the release, putting the turtles in the water and watching them swim away. Luckily there were enough turtles for my fellow interns and I to release the Cooters as well. In total there were about 120 or so turtles released that day. In addition to watching/helping  with the release, we had also set up a booth to educate the public about our facility and just about marine animals in general. This was our first experience working a festival and interacting with the public. It was fun! When we got back we put together materials for the 5k Race on Sunday. We folded the running shirts and loaded envelopes for the runners with lots of fun goodies. We packed just about 200+ packets for the runners, which is a really good turn out!

Releasing one of the Red-Bellied Cooters (Photo Credit: Kate Shaffer)

Sunday: The day of the “Feet, Fins and Flippers NMLC 5K” run. We arrived to help setting up for the race just before 8am, this consisted of setting up water stations, and arrows along the course. As well as the booth to talk about the center, registration booths and all kinds of fun stuff. We sold raffles tickets and helped the runners set up for the race. The Jazzercise table was also set up behind our booth on the lawn which got everyone pumped up and dancing before the race to get the blood flowing. As soon as the race started we had to quickly run over to the end of the race and set up there. I couldn’t believe how fast the runners were! just only a few minutes after we arrived at the finish line (by car mind you) and set up the first was right there! We did have a good turn out though, we surpassed our goal of at least 100 hundred runners by almost 200 hundred more runners! At the end we handed out prizes for the raffles and also the 1st through 3rd place metals for each age group which was pretty cool.

Brie and I at the Feet Fins and Flippers 5k Race with a couple of the runners (Photo Credit: Brie Myre)

That’s pretty much the whole week in a nutshell, jam-packed with events, crazy and hectic, but fun none-the-less.

During rounds on Tuesday Teanna received her exit examination and radiographs and has been deemed fit for release next week. Everyone is welcome to attend this happy occassion, and see Teanna off on her safe return to the Marsh. The release will take place on Thursday June 2nd at 12:00PM in Wellfleet, Ma. Teanna meaning free spirit, a name was selected via a Facebook vote, has proven fit for this turtle. She is very active and ready for her return to the wild. If you would like to attend please contact our Animal Care Coordinator Kate Shaffer for more details at kshaffer@nmlc.org

JOIN US for a spring-time open house!

Saturday, April 16
10 am – 2 pm
120 Main Street, Buzzards Bay

Explore NMLC’s Marine Animal Discovery Center, make a marine animal spring basket, enjoy arts and crafts and games and refreshments, tour our new marine animal hospital. Visit Teanna the diamondback terrapin, Catch-22 the red-bellied cooter, and the eight red-bellied cooter hatchlings in “headstart”.

$5/person suggested donation, members FREE. Join as a member when you arrive and get in free! Donations and memberships help us take care of endangered animals, advance science, and educate youth.

All ages welcome. For more information, call 508-743-9888.

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JOIN US for an Open House celebrating turtles and other marine life!

Saturday, Feb. 19
10 am – 2 pm
120 Main Street, Buzzards Bay

Explore NMLC’s Marine Animal Discovery Center, make a marine animal valentine, enjoy arts and crafts and games and refreshments, tour our new marine animal hospital as we’re about to “turn on the water”. Visit Teanna the diamondback terrapin, Catch-22 the red-bellied cooter, and the eight red-bellied cooter hatchlings in “headstart”.

$5/person suggested donation, members FREE. Join as a member when you arrive and get in free! Your entrance and membership donations will help us “turn on the water” and care for the marine animals we all love.

All ages welcome.  For more information, call 508-743-9888.

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NMLC-11-001-TMT, photo by Wendy Wyman

We asked you (on our Facebook Page) for name suggestions for “NMLC-11-001-TMT”, our first patient of 2011.  Following are the suggestions, with rationale (if any).  NOW, it’s up for a vote!  We will count all votes received here or on our Facebook Page, and the name with the most votes wins!  Please cast your name vote by 5 pm Monday, January 10.

Speaking of voting, please remember to vote for NMLC to win a $250K grant from Pepsi.  Here’s the link.  Because we need to have larger pools for larger turtles!

Name Suggestions (alphabetical order):
~ Amara – meaning eternal. Because turtles live a long time!
~ Bonnie
~ DaRinka
~ Faith – Because without that… what has she got? Faith in you… Faith in us… Faith in humanity!
~ Florida – suggested by a native
~ Frida – (which means brings peace) after the famous painter
~ Hardy – only soften it to become Hardie!!
~ Liberty
~ Lucky Lucy
~ Marilyn – Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
~ Marsha
~ Pinky
~ Precious
~ Pretty Girl
~ Shelly – since she has such a pretty shell!
~ Slinky
~ Spock – so she will live long and prosper
~ Tawanda – She looks amazing
~ Teanna – the Terrapin, means Free Spirit!
~ Terry
~ Tiara
~ Tomasina – Was she a Peeping Tomasina since she was found in the window well?
~ Una – Native American Hopi name meaning “remember”
~ Uno – since she is the first patient of the New Year.