Tiny turtles have found a protector

But some say Linda Christian does turtles more harm than good by intervening. She says she wishes she didn't have to.

By DAN DeWITT

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

PINE ISLAND -- Linda Christian can tell you the incubation period (eight to 14 weeks) for the diamondback terrapin, as well as the turtle's preferred food source (small crustaceans) and its scientific name (malaclemys terrapin).

But as she released a dozen of the young turtles into the salt marsh just south of Pine Island last week and watched them disappear into the aquatic grass, then bob back up to the surface, she wasn't thinking about science. She was thinking about the year she had spent feeding and sheltering the animals -- 2 or 3 inches long and eagerly paddling out into a new, perilous life.

"Aren't they cute?" she said.

Christian is a well-known figure in Hernando County, particularly on the west side, as the county's supervisor of lifeguards and the director of its swimming instruction program; she also works as a lifeguard at the Hernando County Family YMCA.

Her real calling, though, is taking care of animals. She is licensed by the state to rehabilitate injured wildlife. And for the past decade she has protected and greatly bolstered the county's population of diamondback terrapins, a job that requires the knowledge of a biologist and the concern of a mother.

"All wildlife is my thing," said Christian, 45. "Turtles are my main thing."

The extent to which Christian's care of the turtles is necessary is debatable. Turtles do not really need mothers, at least not human ones, said Paul Moler, a biologist with the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who specializes in reptiles and amphibians.

"Animals do a better job of rearing animals than people do," he said. "People give them a cush life and turn them loose and they don't know how to survive."

The sight of turtle hatchlings being devoured by birds -- which first moved Christian to start protecting them -- is natural, he said. All turtle species lay large numbers of eggs, and even under ideal circumstances, very few mature to adulthood.

"Soft-shell turtles in Florida produce an average of 120 eggs per year. If half of them survived you'd be stacked several miles high in soft-shelled turtles," he said.

"I'm sure what she's doing is well-intentioned, but it's very misguided," said Moler. He also pointed out that state law forbids possessing more than two diamondbacks and that the rehabilitation licenses allow only for the care of sick and injured animals, not healthy ones.

"It also may be illegal."

Moler is right about the turtles in less altered conditions, Christian says. But when humans change the environment, they have a responsibility to protect wild animals from the consequences of these changes. And that is what she is doing, she contends.

"We're not dealing with a natural area," she said. "The people and development have taken over what was once a natural area."

The beach at Pine Island is not really a beach, Christian said. It is a marsh covered with sand. This has attracted humans, who disrupt the shallow nests the turtles dig into the sand. The sea gulls and grackles, which devour the terrapins' eggs and hatchlings, would not be present in such large numbers if not for the humans' trash and handouts.

And though Moler said that tampering with the eggs could be doing more harm than good, Christian said she is in the best position to see how the terrapins have benefited from her program.

Christian, a former airline flight attendant originally from northern England, moved to Florida 21 years ago and to Hernando County 13 years ago and began working as a lifeguard at Pine Island.

In her first few seasons there, she saw very few terrapin eggs or hatchlings, and when she did, they were almost always being destroyed. She saw eggs carried away in high tides, children stepping into the nests, and, most memorably, a sea gull scooping up a hatchling making its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

"That's when it really started," she said. "That bothered me."

She began learning about the turtle.

Its traditional range extended from New York to Texas along the Atlantic and gulf coasts. It is not a true marine animal, but lives in brackish water in the estuaries and forages for crabs and other shellfish in the marsh grasses. It is the only American turtle called a terrapin, Moler said, though that name does not have any scientific importance; in other English-speaking countries, it is also attached to sea turtles.

The diamondback reaches a length, measured at the bottom of its shell, of about 9 inches, Christian said. Dark-colored at birth, terrapins develop the light-blue skin that distinguish them, as does the swirl-shaped pattern in panels on their shells.

Christian learned most of these facts from wildlife officials in Virginia, which has seen its population of diamondbacks drop dramatically, partly because of a loss of habitat and partly because they were commonly cooked in soup.

"They used to be harvested a lot in the late 19th century and early 20th century," said Shelly Miller, an aquatic biologist based in Virginia.

Virginia laws do not offer the species any formal protection, she said -- neither does the federal government -- but the state is investigating such action.

"There is evidence of its vulnerability," Miller said. "This is a species we need to know more about."

In Florida, the statewide population of diamondbacks is not seriously threatened, Moler said, "but there is some evidence their population in some parts of Florida is declining."

To prevent that from happening on Pine Island, Christian marks their nests with yellow caution tape. After two or three weeks, when the eggs can withstand the trauma of a move, she transfers them to a hole just to the east edge of the beach.

Once they hatch, she takes them to her home in Brooksville -- a menagerie on 5 acres that she shares with her two teenage daughters, a donkey, a sheep, dogs, cats, macaws and possums that were rescued from their mother's pouch after she was killed by a car. It is the 13th such litter Christian has raised this year.

The turtles live in an aquarium with a small waterfall and flume of running water. When they grow to about 3 inches long, which takes about a year, she releases them.

While the population was virtually nonexistent a decade ago, she said, she now releases about 50 terrapins a year.

She would love it if she didn't have to intervene, she said.

"But how on earth can we expect this to happen naturally when what we have here is no longer natural?"

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