This page is linked only to the site map. Please use caution: these are graphic images of a mass drowning in 8 unchecked nets in spring 06 near a NWR.

The Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge Drownings...

 

...it is with great reservations that we present these photos taken in spring 2006 but while they are graphic, they are illustrative of a larger problem: that the unintentional commercial bycatch of terrapins greatly exceeds the yearly sustainable mortality (2 - 5%), and that this is even before commercial take levels are considered. We have been given still other photos to corroborate this.

 

The following photographs were taken by USFWS (United States Fish and Wildlife Service) off of Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge, which was also one of the main sites for the USGS's (United States Geological Survey) Terrapin Population Survey upon which MD DNR Fisheries is basing its management decisions - we hope that this mortality is factored into any DNR analyses.

 

In other words, terrapin bycatch mortality is already meeting the percentage of mortality of 2 -5% that scientists have historically found that terrapins are able to withstand before their populations start to crash in long term studies.

 

While true, the below pictures are sadly very disturbing, so if you are young, please ask your parents to load this page for you and discuss these images with you after they have seen them first.

 

While this level of atrocity occurs every year many, many times over, we do not think it is fair for Maryland's youth to have to see it; it's a burden the DNR, administration, commercial fishermen, researchers and adults should bear, keeping in mind that terrapin populations are critically dependant on a 95-97% survival rate of their juveniles and adults to maintain a stable population.

 

Being air breathers these terrapins were unable to reach air when these nets were submerged at high tide until the decomposing dead terrapin bodies generated enough gases to lift the heavily burdened fyke nets, causing them to rise to the surface.

 

The only live animal is in picture 4; some 200 terrapins drowned in this single event encompassing one fisherman's 8 fyke nets that went unchecked that week:

 

Terrapins die in fyke nets near Eastern Neck Refuge The Star Democrat, May 08 2006 - Hundreds of terrapin drowned in 8 nets that went unchecked (scroll below for photos which are graphic).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tying the end point of the fyke net as high as possible on the stake it's attached to would help as would the attachment of a buoy within this end chamber to provide an air pocket during high tide as biologists do in popupulation surveys, but not with the volume these unattended nets collected. The weight of these turtles would have kept the nets submerged even at low tide.