On July 30, 2007 one of our Diamondback Terrapins “Pink” went on a field trip to Dr. Robert Baird’s office in Woodbine for a special visit.

Pink arrived at the GSTC earlier this month with a midline fracture of her mandible (lower jaw) after being hit by a car on the Jekyll Island Causeway. After being initially treated Dr. Terry Norton perfomed a temporary repair using materials donated by Dr. Baird. After this procedure she was able to eat squid on her own, but it remained clear that a permanent repair was needed. The repair remained stable while arrangements were made for her to travel to Dr. Baird’s office to have two titanium posts, donated by Dr. Baird, cemented in her mandible to stabilize the fracture.

After traveling to the office she was anesthetized by Dr. Norton and Dr. Baird went to work cementing the two posts into place. After about 45 minutes, the good patient was headed home to the center where she was able to rest comfortably for the evening.

This morning her repair looked great and she heartily ate her squid breakfast and is active in her tank. The center is very excited a appreciative of Dr. Baird and his team for making this possible. We look forward to continuing to work with community members in the future.

Jeannie Miller Aquarist

As many of you know, since his arrival, we have been working towards Dylan hunting and eating live prey. This morning one of our volunteers Jane Bryson and I gave Dylan two live blue crabs and almost immediately he began chasing one of them. He chased it all around his tank and then ever so cautiously bit off a claw and ate it. He then continued chasing it around and then finished off the crab with a quick bite of his powerful jaws.

We were very excited as this is the first time he has hunted and killed a live blue crab. This is a tremendous step in the right direction! Here are some pictures of the hunt and the catch!

Jeannie Miller Aquarist

I finally got up enough courage to try blogging…Please bear with me it is my first time. We really wanted to share with everyone our new diamondback terrapin hatchlings. So far we have hatched 8 total with many more to come. Anyone can name a hatchling terrapin by giving a donation and filling out a name card at our gift shop. All the proceeds go towards our hatchling program. We draw a name out of the box every time a turtle is hatched. So far the names we have drawn are Fric, Frac, JD, Courtney, Umaximus, Sylvester, Tinkerbell, and the soon to be famous Little Puddin Tater. To distinguish one from another we paint a marginal scute in correlation to their hatchling number. For instance Fric is the first hatchling so Fric’s first marginal scute to the right is painted and Frac was the second hatchling so Frac’s second marginal scute to the right is painted.
We will keep you up to date on any new hatchlings that emerge.

Michelle Kaylor Aquarist II

If you’ve been watching Golden Boy’s satellite track at seaturtle.org for the past few days you may have noticed that we’ve been getting data but the map hasn’t updated. What’s probably happening is that Golden Boy is “settling in” to his ocean home and hasn’t been spending much time at the surface. In other words, he’s probably spending a lot of time on the bottom either resting or eating and only coming to the surface to breathe briefly. This means that the quality of the data we get from the satellite tracking system is low because the transmitter needs to be at the surface for a long period of time to get reliable location information. For example, notice all the little black dots on the map below (many on land) that couldn’t possibly be real locations.

As a way to have the map updated more frequently, Michael Coyne (webmaster of seaturtle.org) has created some filters that allow us to determine when some of those low quality data points might still be somewhat reliable indicators of location based on the frequency of data points in close proximity to each other. Mike Arendt, our colleague at SCDNR who is responsible for this monitoring project, has decided to try plotting these new filtered points so that we can get a “general sense” of what’s happening each day even if the locations aren’t completely accurate.

Here’s the latest map as of today (7/26/07):

-Bill

I am sad to report that Nick passed away this weekend. Nick had been battling respiratory problems and pneumonia that were probably the result of aspirating sea water and sand when she was being washed up on the beach before she was rescued. It is very difficult to fight pneumonia especially when the bacteria in the lungs are anti-biotic resistant (as was the case here) and the patient’s immune system is already compromised. As with many human cases, we saw some improvement initially (enough for us to treat the head injury with surgery and the orthopedic device) but ultimately we lost the battle to a very aggressive disease.

While we are saddened by her loss, we remember that our initial assessment suggested that she was unlikely to live for more than a few days after she arrived. Certainly she was a fighter and we’re glad we had the opportunity to give her the best chance she had. Nick served as a wonderful ambassador for her species and helped educate many people who might not otherwise have had the chance to see how amazing these animals are. (By the way, post-mortem examination also revealed that Nick was female, thus “Nick” is short for “Nikki.”)

The GSTC team is grateful to all of you who helped care for Nick, followed her progress in person or online, and who continue to support our work. Your passion and concern was seen and felt through the many emails, letters and “get well” cards we received on Nick’s behalf over the past few weeks. Thank you for caring so much.

We are thrilled to have had such a great “release” last week when Golden Boy returned to the sea and we look forward to treating and releasing many more patients as we move forward helping the ones we can!

Dr. Bill Irwin, Director