Poundnetting
As summer ends, in-water turtle fieldwork begins
On a warm, windless August morning, I was lucky to be invited by Joanne and April from NOAA to tag along for one of their trips to look for turtles in a pound net near Shell Point, Harkers Island, NC.
After leaving the docks at the Cape Lookout National Seashore Headquarters, we took a 10 minute ride to the pound in southern Core Sound (see photo above). Once we arrived, we pulled up close to the "pound," which is the part where fish (and turtles) are trapped but allowed to swim freely.
We untied one side of the pound and pushed it down, so we could enter it with our boat. The photo below shows what it looks like inside, with a view towards the lead that stretches away from the pound and heart.
Once inside, we went to one side and started to pull up the bottom net, so that everything captured in the pound was slowly concentrated in an increasingly smaller area of net, as we moved towards the other side. There was one juvenile loggerhead in the net, which we pulled into the boat for measuring, tagging and subsequent release outside the net.
There were also many horseshoe crabs and fish that we let go by rolling them over the side of the pound.
After we let the turtle go, we headed back to the docks, our fieldwork done for the day. Fortunately, there will be many more opportunities to work with live turtles in the waters of NC this fall.