Why I Don’t Like Crab Pots

By Bob Palmatier

So you say, why should I have a problem with a piece of human ingenuity that works pretty effectively to catch blue crabs for folks to eat and enjoy? I must be in the minority, because there are a lot of them (crab pots) out there in the sounds of North Carolina, and there seem to be more, many more, than there used to be. Of course, there are more people living around our sounds than there used to be not so long ago, and crab pots seem to have increased right along with this population growth. So I should probably just get used to, it, right?

Maybe you’re not familiar with crab pots, and would like to know a bit more.  First of all, a crab pot is a crab trap. It puts the childhood method of tying some bait to a length of string and dangling it over the side of a dock, to shame, as far as blue crabs caught per unit of time. The crab pots I’m familiar with are made with a framework of solid steel rod welded into the shape of a cube about 2 ½ to 3 feet to a side. Commercial pots can be much larger. To keep the crabs in, the cube has what appears to be chicken wire covering each of the six sides. A chicken wire cylinder about 3 ½ inches in diameter with a wire lid is attached to the bottom of the trap standing up about a foot and a half to be stuffed with bait, usually menhaden, if my memory serves me right. Then, there is the weir, the opening on  one side of the trap unfortunately about 7 inches wide, that narrows as it enters the trap, making it impossible for most inmates , who push their way in, to either find their way out, or negotiate their way out. The weir is an age-old concept you can see in John White’s paintings of the native Americans of Roanoke fishing, and is common to most baited traps for many types of animals. Crab pots can be lowered  into the water from docks or marinas, and tied to the railing for safe keeping. Pots can also be dispersed in number from a boat negotiating the marshes, sounds, or estuaries, with the rope attached to a float, so the pot can be retrieved by its owner. In either case, the crabs caught will keep just fine, because they have gills to breathe underwater until they are picked up.

Now, I’m not a big fan of eating crabs or other seafood, anyway. I really think I may be allergic to them, because I often get a belly-ache when I eat seafood. So you might accuse me of just being mean-hearted and wanting to spoil everyone else’s fun with my crab pot vendetta, but that’s not it. I’ve got a good reason, and I’ll be glad to share it with you. It’s been on my mind to say something for a while, anyway, and I think this is just as good a time as any.

It all started with a turtle I first met in the summer of 1989 in Long Beach, N.C., on Oak Island in Brunswick County. I had just gotten interested the school year before in reptiles and amphibians for my classroom in Durham, N.C., where I taught 5th grade. I had a copy of the field guide Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia, by Martof, Palmer, et al, and I had been looking curiously at the picture of the Diamondback Terrapin, Malaclemys terrapin, a small to medium size turtle that the book said lived in the salt marshes and estuaries of N.C. and other states bordering the Atlantic. Here was a turtle that lived on the sound side of our barrier islands, but only in the brackish water of the salt marshes and up coastal rivers as far as the water still held salt and the marsh grass Spartina alterniflora grew.

When my wife and I took our yearly week-long trip to Long Beach, I met a young man working in the local pet shop who said his grandfather might be able to get me one (a terrapin, that is). His grandfather still shrimped the marshes in a wooden rowboat, and had been known to cast-net terrapins from time to time. Before the week was over, I was the proud owner of a black-shelled male terrapin, and my love affair with the species had begun. This was a handsome turtle with a clever black moustache on his beak, and an intense dark-eyed gaze that was most engaging. He had large back webbed feet, for negotiating the tidal waters of the marsh and sound, and his skin was strangely soft to the touch, more so than other turtles I was familiar with. His shell was intriguing, and I guess responsible for the “diamondback” reference in his common name: each of the scutes on his carapace was colored and grooved concentrically to create a diamond pattern. Back at our beach cottage, his temporary home was a blue Rubbermaid bucket, but I knew I could do better at his ultimate destination, my classroom in Durham.

By the summer of 1991, I knew much more about terrapins and herpetology as well. My association with the N.C. Herpetological Society and its members had taught me the importance and methodology of field research studies, and I had obtained an endangered species permit from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to capture and release terrapins at Oak Island, and possess up to two to use in my classroom in Durham for educational purposes. I found a location at the end of Oak Island at a marina bordering the salt marshes where terrapins were accustomed to swimming in to gorge themselves on fish parts that were discarded when charter boat fishermen cleaned their fish at a sink and chopping board mounted there. I purchased a cast-net (with no knowledge of how to use it) and talked the store owner into a casting lesson on the floor of his shop until I was fairly sure I could launch the net from the deck of the marina , aimed at some unsuspecting terrapin. My intentions were to catch terrapins and take them back to the cottage overnight, where I could photograph them, weigh and measure them, write up individual data profiles, and do sketches of anomalies and other interesting features. The next day I would release them back into this unusual ‘habitat”, and cast some more. It got to be a routine back at the cottage, too, for me to set my wife up across the road on the beach, before I set out for a morning or afternoon of terrapin casting. I would cross the road clutching her Brazilian lounge chair, multicolored beach umbrella, and my hammer. My wife would select a suitable spot, and I would use the hammer and a piece of wood as a shield, to drive the pointed end of the umbrella shaft deep into the sand. We could be fairly sure , then, that the wind would not lift and fly off with the umbrella in my absence (which had happened). When my wife was satisfied, I could return to the car and my equipment (cast-net and Rubbermaid bucket), and set off for the marina, knowing that I had fulfilled my duties as a husband and could enjoy my field work with a clear conscience.

In the summer of 1991, I captured, photographed, and took data on 12 terrapins, (ten males, and two females). This may not sound like much, but it was the result of a five or six day work week. The females are broadheaded and massive compared to the males, and they appeared in smaller numbers than the males at the marina. As soon as folks at the marina figured out what I was doing, I became the resident terrapin expert. The older fellow who tended the marina tackle shop quizzed me on an interesting behavior he had observed between the male and female terrapins. The females would surface, appearing from nowhere, it seemed, suddenly trailed by a much smaller male. It wasn’t just once. Every female seemed to have a determined trailing male. “The big ones are giving the babies a ride,” ventured the fellow from the tackle shop. “Well, it probably has more to do with some aspect of mating,” I ventured, as I explained the different sizes of the two sexes. Still, there was no intensity or feverishness in the behavior. The male always appeared surfacing just behind the female at the same distance, about three or four inches, like a little trailer.

Cast-netting the terrapins was not difficult, but it was not foolproof. The goal of a good cast was to fling the net up, out, and over a surfacing terrapin. It didn’t take them long to change from unsuspecting to aware and concerned, though. As they got used to seeing the circling net dropping down over (or nearly over) them, they would turn on the speed with their paddling legs and start diving. In this case it was a race between the turtle and the weights on the descending circle of cast–net. Amazingly, the net often won, and the turtle was painlessly lifted  back up to the deck of the marina where he (or she) was deposited into the waiting bucket.

Of course, many times my aim or timing would be off, and I would pull the net back empty to try again. One real frustration I had, though, was looking out over the water that surrounded the marina to the marsh grass not far beyond. I knew, after all, that there was much, much, more to the terrapins’ lives than this artificial glimpse I was getting at the marina. One of their favorite foods I knew was the periwinkle, a small, acorn-sized sea snail that climbs up and down the Spartina grass according to the movement of the tides, itself feeding off the surface of the vegetation. But only in my imagination could I see the terrapins swimming through the marshes at high tide, grazing on the periwinkles, whose hard shells must seriously challenge the grinding and crushing surfaces inside the terrapins’ mouths. Terrapins pull out and bask on marsh islands, too. I had heard stories of groups of basking terrapins at Virginia Beach from a friend of mine, but I had never seen a terrapin bask. They hibernate by burying themselves in the sandy mud of the marsh channels, and they have been known to bury themselves to escape the heat, too. And what about the nesting females, pulling themselves up on land, sometimes at risk of their lives, to deposit eggs in a spot where the tiny immaculate babies will appear in some 90 days, making their way to the water for the very first time. These were sights that had to be happening in this population, too, but there was no way at the time for me to glimpse them. If this all were happening in more recent years, I would think ocean kayak and radio telemetry equipment, but at the time, there were no ocean kayaks, and radio telemetry equipment was out of my price range.

One tiny terrapin baby found its way to my classroom, via a N.C. Herp Society member who knew of our class’ reptile and amphibian activities from our newsletter, The Reptile News and World Report, which we distributed at the Society’s fall meeting each year. He had been waiting in his truck for a ferry down at the coast, when he saw a seagull dropping something on the pavement from high in the sky. The object bounced and landed on the grass, and proved to be a perfectly healthy and uninjured baby terrapin, much to the gull’s chagrin, I’m sure. Perhaps this tiny turtle had been seized by the vigilant gull while the terrapin was making the journey from his nest to the waters of the marsh. This was a very appealing surprise, and the baby terrapin was welcomed with open hearts by the whole class. But for the most part, I had to content myself to glimpse terrapins swimming and diving, and to match wits with them as I tried to cast-net them, and to hold them up close as I measured and weighed them. Many naturalists never get this close to their favorite species, though. So I continued to appreciate the relationship I did have with this population of marsh turtles, some thirty of whom I could identify down to the details of their shells and feet and faces over the period of four years that I studied them.

I knew how to notch turtles with a small file to number them for a longitudinal study, but the terrapins were so uniquely marked and colored that I decided to take two or three photos of each and place the photos in a photo album as my means of identifying recaptures in subsequent years. Each turtle has its own page, and the page is numbered with its year of capture and data chart number (ie.,1991-1,1991-2, etc.). I have had little problem identifying recaptures when they infrequently occur, and have noticed interesting changes in the turtle’s features at least once. One large female (1991-6) had a bad sore on one of her vertebral scutes related to a long scar on her carapace possibly inflicted by a boat propeller. Two years later when she appeared as a recapture,  the sore was gone, which gave me some added knowledge of and respect for the terrapins’ ability to heal themselves in nature. The unusual variety in their shells and in their skin coloration was also well recorded by the camera shots. Terrapin 1991-2’s beautiful brown shell is virtually smooth, with grooves only at the scale edges, while 1991-12’s black shell is deeply grooved in the diamond pattern in each scute as well as the scute edges. Terrapin 1991-8 has gorgeous coloration on both shell and skin, the frosty green patina that appears on copper when it ages. How I could have captured these details with written notes is beyond me.

As I searched for more information on Diamondback Terrapins I found that North Carolina has the distinction of being one of the states chosen by the federal government in the early 1900’s to house a laboratory to study the feasibility of raising terrapins in captivity at the coast as a “possible source of additional income and to reduce harvesting of wild populations” (Palmer and Braswell,1995). You see, terrapins were endangered around the turn of the century because they were being over-collected as a gourmet food item. At that time they “sold for nearly a dollar an inch to provide soup” for the epicure’s table (Martof and Palmer 1980). Fortunately for the terrapins, the Prohibition (Sherry was a frequent ingredient in terrapin soup recipes.), and the Depression in the 30’s, reduced the demand for terrapin (preparing the turtles to eat was a job often requiring hired help.) Nonetheless, the federal government was interested in studying the feasibility of raising the turtles as a cash crop, and it permitted a terrapin pound to operate at Beaufort, North Carolina from 1902 to 1948, on the present site of Pivers Island, where the Duke Marine Lab is. You can still see a number of the concrete pens there at the island that bordered up to and were cleaned by the tidal waters. A great deal of research was done during those years, and papers were written that can still be referenced at the NOAA library, also on Pivers Island. I made that pilgrimage , myself, one year, and photographed the concrete terrapin pens, now overgrown with grass, but still beautiful to a terrapin devotee. I spent several hours in the NOAA library, searching for articles from the research of Coker, Hildebrand, and others. Here are turtles with a history!

And then it happened! I should have been prepared in some way, because in 1992, when I was trying out various turtle traps at the marina with minimal success, the owner of the marina pulled up his crab pot tied to the dock only ten yards away. It contained two lifeless terrapins, one male and one female, who could have safely entered my turtle traps and lived, but chose to enter the crab pot and died. He was very apologetic, and let me retrieve the bodies from the trap, and then photograph and measure the trap for the day when I would try to do something about it. Fortunately, when I returned the turtles to my cottage for closer examination, I was able to resuscitate the small male by gently pressing on his chest and trying to will life back into him. But the female wouldn’t respond to any method of resuscitation, and I ended up freezing her body to return her to the state museum and preserve her body with formalin for educational purposes. This was a sad day, but it in no way prepared me for what lay ahead.

In the summer of 1995, my wife and I drove to Long Beach for what for both of us had become one of the most restful weeks of the year. Of course, she chose the beach, and I had chosen the terrapins, but we spent lots of time together on excursions to North Myrtle Beach and local restaurants for dinner, or grilling out steaks at the cottage. But this year would be different.

First of all, when I arrived at the marina for my first day of cast-netting, there were no terrapins to be seen in the water. I paced the marina decks, peeking under docks and between the boats that were docked there. Nothing. That was strange. I noticed a fellow fishing off one of the marina’s other docks, and made my way over to him. “Have you seen anything of the turtles that are usually swimming in the water over by the marina?” I ventured. It took a little small talk to get him up to speed. Yes, I had been cast-netting the turtles for four years to study them. I had a permit from the Wildlife Resources Commission. “You know what?” he finally responded.” About two weeks ago me and a buddy of mine were checking out the crab pots tied up at the marina, just to see what they were catching, and there was one crab pot that looked older, or dirtier, than the others, like it had been laying there a long time, and there were about twenty or thirty of those turtles in it, all dead. I never seen anything like it.” We walked over to the location, and he tried to show me the pot, but it was no longer there. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, but it matched up with the other fact of the terrapins’ disappearance. If he were telling the truth, and I had no reason to doubt him, that one crab pot had wiped out my entire study population!

So now you know why I don’t like crab pots. I know you may say that I didn’t see it with my own eyes, and that’s true. But in subsequent years at Long Beach, I never saw another terrapin at the marina. If I had seen the dead terrapins, I could have checked them against my photo log and other data and really done a convincing write-up. But I didn’t see them, and all I have to work with now is an empty spot in my heart and mind and stories I keep reading about terrapins in other states being taken unintentionally in attended or unattended crab pots. I don't like writing a sad story, but this is one I finally had to write. The one factor that could change the ending, at least for the future, though, has to do with research and legislation that has been going on in some other states, and I would like to share a bit of this information with you.

One informative and educational website I’ve found (there are quite a few), is that of the Wetlands Institute  on the Cape May Peninsula in New Jersey (www.terrapinconservation.org/). They have been involved in researching and documenting the decline in terrapins in N.J. for a number of years. They have determined that the greatest risks to terrapins in N.J. have been coastal development, including the death of nesting females from road kills, especially on barrier islands, and loss of turtles to the commercial and recreational crabbing industry. They report that an estimated 14,000-15,000 terrapins a year drown in N.J in crab traps. They spent years developing and testing rectangular. wire turtle excluder devices that fit in the narrow end of the entrance funnels of the crab traps. The devices they have developed prevent most terrapins from entering the traps, and actually have increased crab catch. (Once terrapins are in the traps, they have actually been  proven to scare away other crabs from entering.) As a consequence of this and similar research, N.J enacted legislation in 1998 to require the use of excluders on all commercial-style traps used in waters less that 150 feet in width at low tide or in any man-made lagoon. This includes commercial style traps that are used for recreational purposes. The Wetlands Institute is also involved in programs to incubate terrapin eggs saved from road-killed females, which they incubate ,head start for a year, and then release into the nearby marshes. If you are at all interested in Diamondback Terrapins, you will probably enjoy this website. It is also quite informative on the crab pot issue, and has a number of articles you can either reference or download.

What I would love to see is legislative activity in North Carolina to accomplish some of these same goals. And we may need more research on the decline of our populations of terrapins to help motivate such action. But we don’t want to lose these turtles. They are a fascinating and valuable treasure of our coastal ecosystems. Allowing them to be extirpated in North Carolina would not be in harmony with so many of our state’s programs to conserve our valuable natural resources.

Literature Cited by Wetlands Institute on Terrapins and Crab Traps:

Arcement, E. and Guillory. 1993. Ghost fishing in vented and unvented blue crab traps. Proceedings of the Louisiana Academy of Science 56:1-7.

Bishop, J.H. 1983. Incidental capture of diamondback terrapins by crab pots. Estuaries 6(4): 426-430.

Mann, T. M. 1995 Population surveys for diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) and Gulf salt marsh snakes (Nerodia clarkii clarkii) in Mississippi. Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, Technical Report No.37. 75 pp.

Siegel, R. A. and J. W. Gibbons. 1995 Workshop on the ecology, status, and management of the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin), Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, 2 August 1994: final results and recommendations. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 1(3): 240-243.

Wood, R.C. 1997. The impact of commercial crap traps on northern diamondback terrapins, Malaclemys terrapin terrapin. In J. Van Abbema (ed.), Proceedings: Conservation, Restoration, and Management of Tortoises and Turtles—An International Conference, p21-27. A joint publication of the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society and the Wildlife Conservation Society Turtle Recovery Program. 494 pp.