The whole of today was spent tracking river terrapins in the Setiu River, but there were many asides as my account will soon unfold.

The arrangement was that the team (me, James and Harris) meet in my office at 7.00 am, and Harris would drive and later man the 30 HP boat hired from Mat Rani. James is awaiting his Ph.D. studies while Harris is an Assistant Scientific Officer from the Institute of Oceanography. Both had very kindly agreed to help me in the tracking project.

When we got to Rani’s house, he was just about to go fishing with his brother Mat. I noticed that both his eyes were still swollen and red since the last time i saw him and he had no suitable medication for them. I took a close-up pic of his eyes to show the pharmacist in town, and to get him a prescription. I was appreciative that he took us to his boat and gave Harris a few tips.

We set off in the boat at 8.35 am. Our strategy was to move as far upstream as possible and start tracking from there before the tide receded. We went into the creek where the first terrapin went, but no luck. Then we pushed upstream as far as we could go, tracked but no signals were received. There was little else we could do, except to go back downstream and try to locate the terrapins along the way.

We entered all the little brooks and meanders we could find, sometimes having to push through the dense and prickly overhanging Pandanus leaves. James and Harris resorted to using the oars when the water was too shallow for the outboard motor. We were really quite determined to locate the first terrapin, but luck seemed not with us.

Tired, we decided to just drift downstream a little while, with the hydrophone suspended in the water and the receiver turned on. At 11.30 am, we went into a branch of the Setiu and within minutes, picked up signals from 11521, the 9 kg eight year-old terrapin released on 2nd May 08. She had moved the furthest upstream. Is it because she was the largest of the three terrapins we had released? 11516, the four year old was located at 12.44 pm a little further downstream.

Lunch was a welcome break from the scorching sun. I phoned Zeman (the villager from whom I had rented two net cages to raise some of the terrapins) to get him to meet us at the net cages. His help was needed to raise one of the vacated cages to be sunned before it could be used again. We decided to go ahead and do it ourselves when he did not show up after more than half an hour. I will talk about raising terrapins in net cages in a later blog.

Tracking was resumed at 3 pm. Almost immediately, the receiver went toot toot toot. It was 11516 again, very close to the net cages. She was moving downstream. Interesting. The third terrapin, 11509 was still not located yet. The logical thing to do was to move further downstream. Then, it happened…. The engine would not get started. The chap working at the dredge/pump at the sand-mining site brought his boat over and offered to let us use it. Such is the spirit of villagers. I was most touched indeed. By then, through handphone communication, Acik had told us he was coming to help us. We continued tracking while waiting for Acik and picked up signals from 11509, the last terrapin to be located.

Acik obviously knew the engine. Effortlessly, he got it started. He deftly secured his smaller boat to the one we were using and headed home. He is just 16 years old and looks set to follow in his father’s footsteps as a fisherman.

Shortly after passing Pak Lah Teh, the nesting sand bank from which the terrapins were released, I saw something horrible floating in the water. My fears were confirmed…. It was the carcass of a terrapin. A huge hook was sticking from the corner of its jaw. It was a gruesome site indeed. By the way, the dead terrapin was a painted terrapin (confirmed by counting its five claws, as opposed to four found in river terrapins). The straight carapace length was 38.9 cm and width 28.3 cm. By the time we had it buried outside our Terrapin Head-starting Facility in the campus, it was almost 8 pm. What a long day it had been.

Chan, on tracking trip on 6th May 2008.

• River terrapin updates
• Orchestrating three activities in a day
• First success for terrapin tags
• A bit of this and that
• 4th Terrapin Independence Day in Setiu