Terrapin release: fruits of labor

Hello everyone! This is Logan with the Herpetology Team. I wanted to share a novel experience I had in the last few months, that being the annual diamondback terrapin release with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, around August or September annually, Zoo Atlanta is loaned about 25 juvenile diamondback terrapins to raise in our Georgia Tidal Creek habitat in Scaly Slimy Spectacular. And when I say juvenile, I mean only a few weeks old. At first, they average around 10 grams and are comparable in size to a matchbook! From these tiny beginnings, our visiting public can watch them grow dramatically over the course of a year. When that late summer timeframe comes around again, those terrapins that have been with us for the year go back to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island, where they are released back into the coastal marshes at a more viable size. While visiting, we receive another batch of baby terrapins, and the cycle continues.

As I am a relatively new keeper, September 2024 was my first opportunity to go on this annual adventure with a group of wonderful educators. I got to see firsthand the culmination of all the hard work I and my teammates put into these animals’ care. It was both extremely rewarding and also a fun time!

After a nearly six-hour drive to Jekyll Island, we first arrived at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, where we handed over our terrapins to be released. They were examined for any issues, and all were cleared to be let go the following day. Many on their team remarked at how big they had gotten in the year since they had seen them last, going from single-digit grams to nearly all in their hundreds! After sharing the terrapins, we were shown a few of the patients at the center: a loggerhead, a green sea turtle, a very large diamondback terrapin female, and even a gopher tortoise with a LEGO “wheelchair.” t was so pleasant getting to talk to everyone there about their experiences and their expertise, as well as seeing some of these marine-based herps in person! In the afternoon, the Education Team and I departed for dinner and a stay in a hotel, leaving the terrapins with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center  until the next morning.

The following morning, we met with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center team at the release location, the edge of a brackish coastal marsh. The container of grown terrapins was unloaded from their van. Human-supplied identifiers, such as paint, were removed, but I could still tell some of them apart after all the months I spent with them. Everyone grabbed wading boots and a terrapin in each hand, and we began to walk out a few yards into the marsh. Once a fair distance out, we placed the turtles in the mud at our feet, and watched them slowly make their way out into the vegetation. Not too long after, they could no longer be spotted, and they were gone for good.

It was cathartic knowing that all our hard work and intimate involvement with these individuals over the past year gave them a fighting chance out in the wild. The daily feeding, the weekly weighing, and the constant adjustments to environmental factors was all in service of the release. Not that I didn’t realize it before, but in that moment, I really understood what conservation is all about.

Afterwards, we again brought a new cohort of infant diamondback terrapins back to Zoo Atlanta. While they are already quite big at a few months old now, you can still see them grow before your eyes at Scaly Slimy Spectacular knowing that they too are preparing to face the world in due time!

Logan S.
Keeper I, Herpetology