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This is another published entry for Ichetucknee River Turtle Survey student journals. Dr. Matthew A. Carrigan led our team. Our trip was generously funded byHaverford KINSC Traveling Funds. The study is part of the Santa Fe River Turtle Project in Florida.
The text below records my emotional fluctuations leading to my first catch in Ichetucknee River.
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The water was surprisingly devoid of life. Dr. Johnston shouldn’t have showed us the turtle aggregation videos, which gave us a false expectation of seeing as many turtles. Plunging down from time to time in hope of encountering miracles, I soon depleted my energy and initial excitement. “There might be life down there, but you just don’t see them.” I told myself. How could I spot camouflaged turtles without my glasses?
Earlier on the van, I shared my observations of my pet turtles, who liked staying either under an artificial tree root or in covered platforms close to water surface. Since deep dives rewarded nothing so far, I changed strategy and focused instead on the shallower areas along the shore.
However, for perhaps another hour, besides handing the canoe a trash bottle as my sole discovery, I found nothing still. The canoe even rejected further trash, because they did not have enough space for turtles from others.
“You see, even turtle catching has its art! If you keep dabbling in all fields, you’d achieve nothing! Time to curtail your interests! Look, being myopic means turtle catching is not a good option for you. You did poorly in linear algebra, so done with engineering. What else?” Negative self-talks autoplayed as I poked around. “What’s the most important thing in your life you just can’t abandon? Art. Environment. As always.” I recalled my manga idea inspired by Dr. Johnston’s lecture. My mood lightened. My tone changed. “Here, if you keep seeing nothing, finding nothing, catching nothing, you’ll at least pick trash up. However small, you’ll still do something meaningful for the environment. You can return with both hands full of trash, and congratulate your friends for their hands full of turtles…and thanks to myopia — you won’t see them anyway.”
One minute later, as I was carefully disentangling some soaked paper from a network of tree roots, a little figure on my left side quietly detaching from a root suddenly entered my vision. My neurons fired like a thunder from the back of my head, and the next moment I had wrapped the egg-shaped lovely thing with my glove-linened palm.
The loggerhead musk turtle was my first catch.
At the end of the day I caught four turtles. I was far from catching the most, but wasn’t the least, either — just as I am never as good or as bad as I think of myself.
April 1, 8; edited on April 15, 2018
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