 Today we are at Jewel Lake in Tilden in Berkeley and we're here catching turtles today to look at the western pond turtle Which is a native species of California one of our only turtles and to see how healthy and happy it is in a place Like Tilden, which is relatively natural. It has lots of people around it But which also has another turtle the red-eared slider, which is not native here Red-eared sliders breed a lot more than Western pond turtles They lay a lot more eggs and probably more of those eggs survive to become actual turtles than Western pond turtles do The way that red-eared slider turtles the invasive turtle end up in a place like Jewel Lake Is pretty directly caused by people. They are very common at Petrae They've been that way for decades and they are super cheap But they get pretty smelly pretty mean and pretty gross pretty fast And so people have a turtle that looks sick or just tired having to take care of it and clean it up They bring it to a place like Jewel Lake Which is a very pristine happy-looking place that they imagine will be a good home for their turtle So they let them go When we look at turtles that are released like sliders here in this own pond Then we caught today at a highly deformed shell. It's not from this area didn't involve this climate So over the next several months and several years, we're gonna hopefully figure out how healthy and big this population is 228.4 millimeters Yesterday we came out here We said a couple dozen different traps and these are basically big funnels And we put gross cancer deans at one end of the funnel And that really enticed the turtles to smell that sardine oil and swimming to the traps We had a nice juvenile this morning Which is a pretty good sign that this population is actually able to breed and make babies And the babies can actually survive to be a few years old. So that's pretty exciting news for us Really measuring how long a shell is is our best chance for seeing how old they might be And then we also weigh the turtle to see how heavy they are The heavier a turtle is for a given shell size tells us relatively how healthy or robust it is We can use these little metal files and make small notches and the edges of their shells Doesn't hurt them at all and let us know who is who in these ponds So we can tell how big the population is and track the health and size and growth of individual turtles over time We had nine pond turtles in one slider That's a pretty good haul for this small pond with one night of trapping So we're excited to come back and keep doing our thing I love turtles. I think everyone loves turtles. So being out here getting to play on the water Being nature and seeing these amazing animals is really one of the best parts of my job They are these pretty historic animals. So just thinking about things that you know existed before Mammals and birds ever were on this planet now living in the middle of a city And it's just one of the most amazing things to me that they can can deal with these rapid changes And they can't always do it Which is why I think conservation is so important given that these are very long lived animals But they also are very sensitive to everything we do