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The surface of our planet is more than 70% water.
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This liquid network of streams and rivers, lakes and oceans makes up the vast majority of livable space for countless creatures in our wild Kingdom.
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Beneath the water surface, billions of animals live out their existence hidden from our view, like the enigmatic cephalopods, eels, and even mammals.
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Today, we're highlighting a few of our favorite aquatic creatures and the dedicated conservationists fighting to protect them.
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I'm in suburban Atlanta, and I'm here to learn about the conservation of one of Georgia's rarest reptiles, the Suwanee alligator snapping turtle.
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We're going to go over here, but first, wildlife educator Christian Cave and US Fish and Wildlife consultant Greg Brashear have a surprise in store for me.
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Ready.
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OK.
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I think he's going to be a little bit of a fight.
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Oh, my.
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Wait, wait.
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Whoa.
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You are kidding me.
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This is an alligator snapping turtle.
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This is wild.
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You're special.
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What's his name?
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That's Al.
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Big Al.
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Big Al.
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Yeah, that's fitting.
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We're in Greg's elaborate backyard turtle sanctuary, which houses over 200 rescued turtles.
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Some of them are the most endangered turtles in the world.
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I am a lifelong turtle nerd, and I do work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
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I've been in the turtle since forever.
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It's just something about them I've always been drawn to.
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The wild Sewanee River, which flows from the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, is the only place on Earth to find the T Rex of turtles.
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The gargantuan, prehistoric Sewanee alligator snapping turtle.
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Biologists Chris Coppola and Dirk Stevenson and consultant Greg Bershear are in Year 3 of a Fish and Wildlife Recapture project to study this threatened species.
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We trap these turtles, we weigh them, we measure them, we tag them, we release them, and then we recapture them later.
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And it gives us population size, population density, range, and overall health of the turtles in the ecosystem.
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What makes this conservation work so important are the threats this turtle species has faced.
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Historically, North American turtles were severely reduced by the turtle soup industry.
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Up until the 1970s, teams were pulling tons of turtles out of rivers like this one every day.
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The Swati alligator snapping turtle was just listed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a threatened species.
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This is important because this is a species that's slow to mature.
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It takes decades for an individual animal to start producing eggs.
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The team heads into the field to hopefully find a Suwanee snapper.
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Earlier, they set several large turtle traps along the riverbanks.
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Now it's time to see what they've caught.
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So this trap is saggy, right?
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Yeah.
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That's Gator snapper.
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Yeah.
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It's got some weight to it.
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It's right here.
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Whatever it is.
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There we go.
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There you go.
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Oh, that's a nice one too.
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Oh, my goodness.
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Look at that beautiful yellow head.
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Let's haul him to the bank for processing.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah, look at that.
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What a beautiful animal.
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Powerful Jaws.
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Let's get some measurements and find out exactly how big this guy is.
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Watch yourself.
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I think we're over £60 / 60.
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Yeah, that is a classic male swanee alligator snapping turtle.
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This is their defensive posture.
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He's not coming after me.
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He's just got his mouth open.
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He's just saying, hey, if you make a dumb mistake, you know you're going to regret it.
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That mouth just sits open and if anything goes in there, that's it.
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You know, like a big Nutcracker.
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We can set him down and start working on him.
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390 today.
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Habitat loss, abandoned fishing gear and a changing climate are slowing the snapping turtle’s recovery, but thanks to projects like this one, there's hope they can be eventually removed from the endangered species list.
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123 Heavy turtle 75.8 I think we were all wrong.
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Salwani snapper weight correlates to age, which means this turtle could be over 70 years old.
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Goodness gracious, guys.
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I got to tell you what, they're completely deserving of all the respect to give the alligator snapping turtle.
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North America's largest freshwater turtle species.
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All right, big fella, let's place you right back down into your beautiful river system and let you go.
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And it's neat that even though he's got the right yellow coloration, you can see he just disappears.
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You would never know he was in there.
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Oh my goodness.
