Tag surprise
It was just another regular necropsy training session with students in the Duke University Sea Turtle Summer Course at the end of July. Wendy, Larisa, Lisa, Kelly and Terra were all helping out to open up the previously frozen dead turtles, showing the different organs and explaining how to collect samples. The students also opened up the stomach and instestines to see what was in there and to check for trash or blockages. Amidst all the crab parts in one of the juvenile loggerheads, somebody found a shiny yellow plastic tab with wire attached (see above). We washed it off and found that it had a return address and a plea to send it to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries with details of when ane where it was found. We surmised that it was a tag put on a crab, and we chuckled about how unlikely it was that we found it. Soon after, in a different loggerhead, somebody found another yellow tag. These two turtles had originally been found dead in different areas of North Carolina: one near Beaufort Inlet, the other near the Cape Fear river. We sent the tags to DMF with the appropriate information the next day, and waited for a response. Finally, today in the mail I received the information on the tags:
The crab inside the turtle from Beaufort Inlet had been at large for 36 days since being tagged, and had moved a total of 5.6 miles (although it may be that most of that movement occurred while inside the turtle's stomach).
The crab inside the turtle from the Cape Fear river had been at large 211 days since being tagged, and had moved a total of 11.8 miles from where it had been released.
I spoke with David Taylor, who is running this research project at DMF, and he told me that they have had good success in getting tag returns from crab fishermen from all over the state. However, he did say that this was the first time they had recovered a tag (actually 2) from the belly of a turtle.
Oh, and I almost forgot: he sent 2 caps as a reward for the tag returns. Finally, a non-seaturtle cap!
