Turtles!

Really, this is about turtles. My family and I were invited to help with a study of the Rio Grande Cooter, a freshwater turtle whose range extends from the Pecos River in New Mexico, all along the Rio Grande right until the ocean. However, due to all the fracking in West Texas the Pecos River is basically dried up through big stretches, and much of the Rio Grande is heavily polluted, so this turtle is in some trouble!

But the turtles in the Devils River are blissfully unaware of any troubles--it is the most pristine river in Texas and is fed by a myriad of springs coming out of limestone cliffs. This is where we went, and we had a great time. These turtles just eat water plants, so you can't really trap them--you just have to swim them down. This requires some flippers and some good breath control--the main pool where we were catching them is about 40 feet deep, and the turtles head straight for the bottom! We caught 16 total, but 15 of them were caught by the two other biologists who have been at this for years. Yours truly caught only one--but hey, it was the biggest of the bunch!

You can see that this large female also has a radio transmitter attached to her shell. We were able to download the GPS data showing her travels of the past 6 months. We really don't know how far they may move, but we do know that we could only locate 8 of the 10 that had transmitters put on them last fall. To find a turtle with a transmitter you canoe up and down the river with the telemetry equipment (an antenna and a receiver).

Our oldest son really enjoyed guiding the canoe down such a nice river.

In short, it was a great weekend to be a biologist!

And that's the end of my tale!