Apart from going on a road patrol 5 times a day and performing eggectomies on roadkills, researchers at the Wetlands Institute conduct other terrapin-related studies too. For example, a visiting scientist from the Swarthmore College deploys crab traps in Mulford Creek, just behind the Wetlands Institute in a mark-and-recapture study.

In the mark-and-recapture study, the visiting scientist deploys his commercial crab traps in the creek during the first high tide of the day. The fish bait will attract crabs and well, diamondback terrapins! He then checks the traps again during the second high tide (which is usually in the evening) and he empties the traps and brings the terrapins back to the institute.

Depending on the number of terrapins that the 15 crab traps are able to trap, back in the lab, we will have a micro-chipping party :D We will fill up a mark-and-recapture data sheet for each terrapin, and we will then measure and weigh it. If the terrapin does not have a microchip (and most terrapins don’t), we will microchip it (but since micro-chipping is an entirely different business, I will blog about it next).

Terrapins that have been processed will be kept overnight, and they will all be released the next morning, when he checks the crab traps during the first high tide.

When we go on a road patrol, we would usually see only adult female terrapins because only females come out to lay eggs. But with the traps, we are able to trap juvenile terrapins as well as male terrapins. It is hoped that the data collected from the mark-and-recapture study is sufficient to estimate the population size of the terrapins in the area.