This pretty river is where Dr Wilson from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga conducts his studies on the riverine turtles. The first time I was out in the river, the weather wasn’t too kind, and we had some extremely strong winds and choppy water and I thought, for a moment, that we were in the sea!

But of course, after spending a few days in the river, I kind of fell in love with it :heart:

Anyway, the basking traps that we set out trapped about 250 turtles (mostly red-eared sliders, Trachemys scripta) in about a week. The baited hoop nets, on the other hand, did not trap any turtles.

In order to trap many turtles with the basking traps, the weather must be warm enough for the turtles to climb onto the traps. But if the weather was cloudy and if a storm was rolling in (there was once when we were in the river and a storm was supposed to roll in. It did not come, but we had isolated showers instead), the turtles wouldn’t be basking, and we wouldn’t find them in the traps the next day.

I am trying to arrange with my sponsors to see if it is possible that I return to Chattanooga in July for a Conservation Biology Conference. If that materializes, I hope I’d have the chance to visit the Tennessee River Gorge again! :D