Ever wonder what it’s like to swim with snapping turtles, but were too afraid to try? Well, now you can, without actually getting in the water.
National Geographic has provided Crittercams to the Tributary Mill Conservancy and Mystic Aquarium for underwater video.
The cameras naturally show large snapping turtles, some more than 40 pounds, swimming, hunting, and resting in Connecticut lakes, ponds, and rivers.
The video is part of an overall research project of snapping turtle behavior, and what they can tell us about the environment we all live in.
“They’re high on the level of the food chain,” Tracy Romano, a Mystic Aquarium researcher, said. “They can accumulate all of those pollutants into their body and so that’s why they are good indicators of how the environment is doing in terms of pollution.”
The National Geographic Crittercams stay on turtles for just a few hours.
They automatically release and float to the water’s surface for retrieval.