Caught a diamondback terrapin in the crab trap. Maybe this better belongs in fishing discussion but hey, it was a catch to report and may get more attention here. The trap had only been out overnight and there was still chicken and mullet in the bait box. But the crabs seem to have preferred the turtle -picked CLEAN. Like a shell you’d buy at a roadside tourist stop in Florida. The local hardware store is a distributor of the free crabtrap fish/turtle excluders but I always thought they were unecessary. I’m not an enviro and don’t know if diamondbacks are endangered and don’t care. But there’s no reason to kill something for no reason and I hate sorting through catch -voluntarily put cull rings on the traps in hope that I could just empty the pot into the bait or dinner bucket and know everything is 5+. I don’t blame watermen for not using excluders or cull rings if they keep out or let out 10 or 20% of the legals that pay the bills. But there will always still be plenty for us recreational guys even if we do a few things that minimally limit catch but keep/let out what we don’t weant in the first place.
Hobo: I am down in Bluffton SC and the diamondbacks are fairly common this time of year. I guess that they are mating now and are move active and visible than usual. I don’t know of any way to keep them out of crab pots, the crabs could easily get free from any TED that was employed on a traditional crab pot. All I can venture is check the pots frequently and release the turtles if you can. They are not as common as they once were. They used to be so plentiful that they used them for hog feed.
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There were a lot of diamonback terrapins over at King Flats Creek near Bowens Island yesteray. Also saw a loggerhead turtle near the sunken pier up in King Flats. I kept seeing something behind us as we slowly moved into the creek with the trolling motor, I thought it was a huge hunk of driftwood bobbing slowly, but it finally got close enough (30-40 feet) for me to see very clearly a turtle head/snout the size of a cantaloupe… I heard it huffing as it came up for air, I thought it was a dolphin until I turned around.
Moral judgment under girds the entire structure of laws and is necessary for the rational structure of any significant statute. The idea that our laws can stand independent of moral foundation is senseless.----- Albert Mohler.
They are part of the food chain. Reds will eat them just like they would a crab. Crabs probably ate it just because it was an easy fresh meal that tasted more like fish than your chicken parts did.
This time of year there are thousands of terrapins in and around the harbor. I believe the official stance of dnr is that they are endangered, but gigging in the summertime, its common for us to see hundreds per night.
