According to the news report Jennifer McGrath, a biology teacher at Morris Hills High School in Rockaway, joined an Earthwatch research team to help endangered turtles. She joins hand with a research team conducting a population conservation study of the Diamondback terrapin. This species of turtle is native to New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay, a longtime center for commercial fishing.
Barnegat Bay has been designated as a Marine Conservation Zone and it has some of the last remaining salt marsh ecosystems in the entire mid-Atlantic. McGrath informed that as an Earthwatch volunteer, it was her job to help capture, tag and track terrapins, as well as monitor their nests and collect data to determine how many of these turtles live in the New Jersey area.
The Diamondback terrapin gets its name from the diamond pattern on top of its shell. Measuring five to eight inches in length, the turtle is of special concern to scientists. Earthwatch Institute supports scientific field study by offering volunteers the opportunity to join research teams around the world. As a key part of McGrath’s work, she and other volunteers dug up clutches of five to12 turtle eggs nesting in the sand dunes. After weighing and marking them, the team had to return the eggs to their nest exactly as they had retrieved them.
