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It started with the mysterious discovery of more than a hundred turtles, some with their shells smashed, others dismembered, all of them dead. It ended with a potential warning for the future.
It was Gregory Bulté who found the turtles. The biologist from Carleton University was out on the water of eastern Ontario's Opinicon Lake in April 2022 when he saw a dead northern map turtle — so-called because its shell resembles the contour lines of a map. As he bent to pick it up from the shallows, he saw another.
Bulté raced home, fetched his wetsuit and snorkel and got into the frigid water — where winter ice had recently melted — to collect the bodies. He kept finding more piles of dead turtles; he filled buckets with them. "I was like, 'Whoa, when is this going to end?'" he said.
When it eventually did, he had nearly 150 dead turtles, many of which Bulté knew from his two decades of monitoring work at the near-pristine, forest fringed lake. It was a devastating blow, wiping out roughly 10% of the lake's population.
The deaths were a puzzle for Bulté. It was clear from the turtles' damaged bodies that this was a predator attack, and only one animal was likely strong enough to have done it: the river otter.
Read more at the link in our bio.
📸: Michael O. Snyder and Justin Dalaba
