When people ask me why I study turtles, I usually say that it is because I like them. That is really the truest and simplest answer, but I thought it would be fun to provide a bit of the background on how I ended up studying turtles in Malaysia. It's kind of a long story...
It all started with the box turtles. Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina we kept a few box turtles as pets in our side yard and I was very fond of them. Their shells were so round! They ate cherry tomatoes in such a charming way! I think of those box turtles as the starting point of my lasting affection for turtles, and that is probably when I started collecting little models of turtles and honing my ability to eat like a turtle--ask me to show you sometime. ;)
Over the summer of 2005 I was an undergraduate research assistant studying plant physiology at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's station on the Panamanian island of Barro Colorado (which is in Gatún Lake, part of the Panama Canal). I really liked working in the rainforest, but I also found myself captivated by a group of large freshwater turtles hanging around the docks. It made me very happy to see them out sunning themselves on the bank every day, so I composed a little song in Spanish for my Panamanian turtles. But, more importantly, watching those Panamanian turtles made me curious about turtles as a biologist for the first time. I tried to find out all I could about the turtles there, and I made learning about turtle lore, biology, and conservation my project over the following winter holiday.
Two summers later I managed to get an internship at the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, New Jersey working with Malaclemys terrapin (the Diamondback Terrapin). Under the advice and tutelage of Drs. Patrick Baker and Roger Wood, I got my first taste of turtle research and conservation in the field. It was fantastic! I helped with the terrapin conservation program at the Wetlands Institute and also carried out my own project studying the development of scute anomalies in terrapins (I'll make a page about that one day soon), which involved trapping and measuring almost 300 terrapins from the local marshes. I remember saying to my family during a week of round-the-clock trapping: "I don't think I have ever been this happy and this tired before in my life!"
Two summers after that, I happened to be in Cambridge, UK visiting a friend and I stopped by the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Science, which is home to a truly impressive collection of fossils. There were not many other people in the museum at the time, but I noticed a man looking very intently at some specimens. At first I merely asked him for the time and we parted ways, but something told me to go back and talk to him, so I went over and asked what he was looking at. We chatted for a while and he explained that he was a visiting paleobiologist from the University of Malaya in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. That piqued my interest, because by that time I was aware that Southeast Asia is one of the most important places for turtle conservation in the world, and I was already considering the possibility of applying for a Fulbright Fellowship to study turtle conservation somewhere in the region. I mentioned my interest in turtle conservation and he suggested I contact Dr. Chan Eng Heng, who has been a pioneer in turtle conservation research in Malaysia. Many emails ensued; I applied for and was granted the Fulbright Fellowship; and now, one year later, here I am: about to spend ten months working with and learning from the wonderful people and turtles of Malaysia.
It is funny how the story seems to flow looking back, but there were lots of gaps along the way when it didn't seem like a story at all. I guess that is because this is just one of the many stories that make up my Whole Story, but it is one of my favorites. I cannot wait to write the next chapter!
