Research
The Diamondback Terrapin
The diamondback terrapin is the only turtle in North America that spends its entire life in brackish, tidal water. On Long Island, that means salt marshes, tidal creeks, and the edges of barrier beaches along the south shore, the same habitat that supports shorebirds, fish nurseries, and a long list of other species worth protecting.
Terrapins are also in trouble. They were hunted nearly to extinction for soup in the early 1900s, and even after that pressure eased, they have kept facing threats: nesting females killed crossing roads, eggs and hatchlings lost to predators, drowning in crab traps that lack a bycatch reduction device, and the slow squeeze of marsh habitat lost to development and sea level rise. In New York, the terrapin is listed as a species of special concern.
Why We Need Your Help
Seatuck Environmental Association is using drone video to document diamondback terrapins as part of a grant-funded habitat assessment project on Long Island's south shore. Flying a drone over a marsh lets us record long stretches of basking and nesting habitat quickly and without wading through the marsh and disturbing the animals we are trying to document.
That leaves us with hours of drone footage, more than a single research team can review on its own. That is where you come in. By watching the footage and marking the terrapins you spot, you are helping us turn raw video into real data on where terrapins are showing up and how many we are seeing.
What Your Classifications Will Be Used For
The counts gathered through this project feed directly into Seatuck's grant-funded terrapin habitat assessment, helping us document where terrapins are present along Long Island's south shore. Just as important, this project is a chance to get more people directly involved in terrapin conservation. The more people who spend time looking closely at this footage and learning to spot terrapins, the more people there are out there who care about protecting them.