Maryland - Something Fishy: When the State Reptile is a Fish

“It’s no fish you are buying…”

The Antiquary, chapter 11; Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832.

 

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life… [and] the creeping things and the beast of the earth.”

So from day One, well actually it was day Five or Six, living things became grouped into ones that live in the water, in the air, or on land. Vocabularies developed around such simplistic classification schemes.  Fish were creatures that lived in the water. People used the word ‘fish’ for aquatic beings-- fish, starfish, jellyfish, and shellfish. The whale that swallowed Jonah was a great fish. It was not until about the time of our revolutionary war that people began to appreciate the patterns of animal relationships when Linnaeus developed his system of classification. In pre Biblical times the ancient Greeks often used similarities in appearance to suggest animal relationships. Serpents they believed were born from the mouths of eels, and the ancient world was organized with groupings such as fire, water, air, minerals, plants, fish, animals, birds, people, and Gods.

Our knowledge of relationships between objects and living things has progressed considerably in the last 200 years. We know, for example, even all fish are not the same; lampreys and sharks and rays are not any more related to a goldfish than a goat is to a tree frog. While we are still comfortable calling sharks “fish”, people realize they are quite different and unrelated to trout, guppies, seahorses and other modern boney fishes.

There were a few set backs: The Bermuda government at one time considered sea turtles fish, and even proposed laws to protect these “fish”. The Catholic Church, in the interest of keeping the maximum number of their New World, former heathen members faithful to the Church, eased up the restriction of meat consumption on Fridays and during Lent. They declared that iguanas, crocodilians, turtles and capybaras were actually fish. Thereby they could be consumed without guilt. The situation became even more absurd after the Pope’s designated authorities decided that the black-capped petrel could also be consumed during Lent. While it was obvious that these seabirds could not be regarded as fish, the Church concluded that they also could be eaten for Lent as they were clearly some sort of vegetable. In Catholic dominated Latin American and a number of West Indian nations' people remained free of sin but many of these “fish” became instantly rare, and several still suffer major conservation issues today because of the original decrees.

 

OK, but now almost everyone has it straight. Fish are fish, and things that aren’t fish are all something else. It’s rather straight forward I would think.
Well almost. There were those annoying car insurance ads that claimed that the gecko was the state amphibian of what ever state from which the ad was broadcast. Last week I watched a TV newscast, where a wayward manatee found its way far up a river and needed to be rescued and returned to a coastal location. The news commentator ended the broadcast by saying she always enjoyed uplifting fish stories.

 

Then there are the legal aspects of poor labeling and marketing. The State of Maryland regulates diamondback terrapins under their Fisheries department and they manage them like fish. In turn the commercial fishermen and the seafood dealers who store and ship them treat terrapins like their other seafood products. (Actually we don’t ship them anymore, this is another word left over from times past. Today we “truck” or “fly” them.) The issue is that unlike real fish that soon die when they are removed from water the terrapins, being air-breathing souls, don’t die. At least they don’t die in a timely manner. And being turtles they can survive for long periods stacked in boxes while placed on ice and in coolers. Ones left on docks overnight often freeze, only to re-thaw the next day. Dealers have told me of terrapins whose frozen limbs are so brittle that they break off when you pull on them. They live, too. Yanked from their hibernation spots on the bottom, or snared in nets like fish, terrapins start their journey to fish markets. And then, after being stored alive on ice for days or weeks they are finally sold to people who prepare them by dropping the living turtles directly into boiling water. A traumatic death—the sequel to an extended, prolonged period of suffering.

 

Unlike most species in the seafood trade, there are no catch limits for Maryland, so during years of poor oyster or crab harvest, a commercial fisherman can regroup and cut his losses with terrapins. The concepts behind fish management, the decision process of fisheries managers, is built on creatures like fish, oysters and crabs that produce thousands, some times tens of thousands of eggs each year, and species which typically mature in a year or two. These same commercial regulations don’t actually work for a long-lived turtle with a prolonged period as an adolescent and a small annual egg output. Forget that they live as long as most people, and let’s overlook the fact that Maryland also recognizes this “fish” as its State reptile and university mascot.

 

So what is the big deal? Well, excluding the humane aspects regarding their treatment, the real issue is the terrapins’ welfare on a population level. In addition to a nearly unregulated harvest, the Bay’s terrapins face a number of additional problems. These include shoreline development, drowning in crab pots, being run over by cars on their way to nesting sites, erosion of nesting beaches, pollution, high mortality as bycatch in fishing nets, and nesting females being ground-up by the mowing of road shoulders. The annual cumulative effect is of significant magnitude. The decades of neglect and total lack of appropriate conservation efforts is now placing our Bay’s terrapins in serious jeopardy. So who oversees all this, who addresses these problems? No one. Not the protective wildlife agencies, these things are regarded as a “Fisheries” species and not the Fisheries officials when the terrapins are on land, and apparently not when outside the Fisheries’ commercial fishing season. At these times terrapins are not under the jurisdiction of Fisheries. See, when it’s convenient sometimes they actually become animals.

 

Someone needs to educate Maryland DNR. Terrapins are a species of turtle, and turtles are a type of reptile. School kids know this, why can’t the issue be recognized by our government? At least if they are unable to regulate and protect this turtle maybe they could pretend that they care as to what they are. The National Weather Service does not regulate National Parks, the Navy does not control forest management, and the Departments of Human Services do not oversee the world’s oceans. There are reasons for this, and most would agree the reasons are obvious. OK, so why does our State Fisheries office continue to dictate the fate for our state reptile? I guess it’s simply another fish story.

 

From the point of view of people and conservation organizations concerned with the welfare of the Bay’s terrapins the situation is also frustrating because these turtles are managed under Fisheries. Animal welfare groups and conservation organizations have little experience with the Fisheries administrators, and of course see the terrapin issues from totally different perspectives. At this time the Humane Society, The Terrapin Institute, The Chesapeake Terrapin Alliance, The Maryland Natural History Society, The Mid-Atlantic Turtle and Tortoise Society, The Maryland Herpetological Society, The M.A.R.S. Preservation Fund, The National Aquarium, The Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland, Defenders of Wildlife, several Audubon societies and canoe clubs, and dedicated research scientists are all hoping to get the terrapin fishery closed. No one will listen.

 

In 2001 The Governor of Maryland appointed a Task Force to look at the situation. The DNR fisheries staff essentially ignored all the primary recommendations and modified the secondary ones to the point that they were meaningless. This was in despite of the fact that the Task Force’s recommendations became an Executive Order. In Orwellian logic they claimed that their new regulations took into consideration the recommendations of the Task Force. Then they held public hearings regarding their proposed changes in the regulations. A 10 July 2006 hearing was particularly well attended and many people spoke up and stated dissatisfaction with what was being proposed. The State was given piles of written statements and publications from the scientific community which all documented that a terrapin fishery was unsustainable. DNR later announced that they had support from the public and the scientific community for the new regulations. They even placed out of context quotes from their critics in press releases to support their foolishness. The interesting part was these regulations were apparently finalized and submitted even before the public comment period had ended.

 

Their only answer to the problems was that the situation needed further study: an assessment of the fishery stock. There is no funding for this and any assessment is years in the future. Then the politicians and Fisheries administrators retreated behind closed doors, redrafted and passed legislation that put additional burdens on the Bay’s terrapin populations, concluding that the commerce could continue until the survey information became available. Later they thanked everyone for their helpful input. In the mean time the commercial trade of terrapins is accelerating as markets expand. As an interesting aside DNR actually had a point person to over see terrapin issues. She quickly assessed what the issues were and became very outspoken about flaws in the existing Fisheries policies. Shortly after an administration change she lost her job under a very transparent guise of a reduction in force driven by budget cuts. Terrapin Day, a direct out growth of her enthusiasm for the State’s reptile and proclaimed by a former Governor, was eventually dismissed by the current administration.

 

All the time this was going on the demand for terrapins went from near nothing to one of greatly increased magnitude. Commercial fishermen discovered that the Asian community, both here in the US and abroad had a bottomless appetite for terrapins. Exporters and dealers used local newspaper ads and the internet message boards to let it be known to the commercial fishermen that they were ready to purchase terrapins by the ton and ship them to China. The trade is now in full swing: the number of individuals now holding commercial terrapin licenses has just over quadrupled the previous average, and the number of unreported terrapins that are collected and shipped is unknown as the fishery is not very well regulated. Boxes full of terrapins shipped to Asia are unmonitored as they are simply and legally labeled “seafood.” Additionally, Chesapeake terrapins are now being sold as pets over the internet as the small ones have little food value.

 

A petition against commercial use of terrapins is in circulation. It’s difficult to find anyone not willing to sign it and most people who now know the situation because of their signing the petition had no idea and are shocked that the Bay’s terrapins are still being exploited. Several bills to have a complete closure of the industry are currently being prepared. On scientific, biological and humane grounds closure is the only option. Yet, even if the bills pass, there is little doubt that in the future commercial interests will petition State Fisheries to reopen the fishery. Fisheries personnel and fishermen see these turtles as dollar signs, not as living beings that are an important component of the Bay’s ecosystem. It’s time that common sense takes a seat in government. It’s time for these terrapins, the most celebrated of American reptiles, to stop being managed like they are fish. The stewardship of the Bay’s terrapin needs to be transferred to another agency and commercial exploitation of our terrapins needs to be prohibited.

D. S. Lee, Nov 2006; Art: Leo Schleicher

“She is neither fish nor flesh, nor a good red herring”

Proverbs. Part 1, Chap X