Assemblage
of turtle bones on Tom King’s lab bench.
When TIGHAR
researchers talk about Nikumaroro Island, eventually the discussion will turn
to the discovery of bones.
Usually
the bones discussed will be of the human variety, but not always. The turtle bones found at the Seven Site at
first do not seem nearly as fascinating as the official correspondence
detailing the discovery of human bones of a castaway on Nikumaroro in late 1940
and 1941. But they are worth a closer
look for what they can tell us, both about turtles, and about the person or
persons who used turtles at the Seven Site.
One
reason they are worth a closer look is that we have them to study. The human bones, by comparison, have been
lost in the years since their analysis in Suva, Fiji but we continue to search
for them.
Another
reason is that they provide a possible clue about the location on the island
where human bones were found. In an
October 17, 1940 telegram to the Secretary of the Western Pacific High
Commission, Gerald Gallagher reported that "remains of fire, turtle and
dead birds" at the human bones discovery site "appear to indicate
life." The fact that Gallagher found turtle bones, as
did TIGHAR in several excavations on the Seven Site, is, in Tom King's
opinion, "one of the better reasons for equating the Seven Site with the
human bones discovery site."
But Dr.
King doesn't base this opinion simply on the fact that the turtle bones were
there. Pacific Islanders do, after all,
hunt turtles, as do people all over the world.
He bases it on an inventory of what kinds of turtle bones were there,
and how that inventory relates to what is known about hunting and food
preparation practices of islanders known to have lived on Nikumaroro.
The
turtle bones found at the Seven Site appear to have all been associated with
the carapace and plastron (the upper and lower shell) of one or perhaps more
turtles. No limb bones were found.
The
absence of other bones is at odds with the ways in which Nikumaroro islanders
report hunting turtles:
During a
2011 interview with surviving residents of Nikumaroro now living in Rawaki
Village in the Solomon Islands, Taniana Bourika, then aged 74, explained that
"he and his comrades would hunt turtles on the far side of the
island" (a fair enough description for the Seven Site) "butcher them
there, using everything from the carcass except the bones and shell[1].” But if the turtle
bones represent a casual use of turtles as a food source by islanders who
prepared them as soon as they finished hunting them and indiscriminately
discarded all the remains there, where are the limb bones?
The Coast
Guardsmen from the LORAN station, active from 1944-1946, could have decided one
day to go turtle hunting (although surviving members interviewed by TIGHAR do
not recall doing anything like this), but if they hunted turtles at the Seven
Site, why would they not take the entire turtle back to their Quonset huts on
the southern tip of the island? If they
staged a cookout on the Seven Site, why would there be left only carapace bones
and plastron?
It has
been speculated the turtle bones may in fact not be the remains of a meal at
all; rather, they could represent the castaway's attempt to use the concave
parts of a turtle to collect rainwater.
That is a possibility, but it may not tell the whole story. Some of the turtle bones show signs of having
been chopped apart with a tool such as an ax or machete. Colonists and Coast Guardsmen most likely had
easy access to such tools, but so might have the castaway. Some of the glass at the site, notably that
of the base of the ointment pot, which has been interpreted as a freckle cream jar, shows what use wear
specialist Geoffrey Cunnar observed as signs of having been used as a cutting
tool.
Then we come, in this
leisurely paced tour of turtles, to what must needs be one of the stranger
aspects of turtle remains found at the Seven Site. A piece of plastron exhibits a round hole in
it.
Ric
Gillespie measured the hole and observed that its dimensions matched nearly
exactly to a casing from a .22 caliber pistol.
Ric and some others of us opined, perhaps too conveniently, that the
turtle from which the plastron came was shot by a hungry but tender-hearted
castaway aiming for what was perceived to be a vital organ.
Guns can
be carried by anyone, however. A Coast
Guardsmen could also have dispatched the turtle with a gun, and there are signs
that Coast Guardsmen did shoot for recreation at the site, bringing dishes or
radio tubes or anything handy, perhaps even shooting up artifact bottles. A .22
caliber civilian firearm, however, does not seem to have been the type of
weapon they used for shooting practice. Rather, a .45 caliber seems to have
been the Coast Guard's standard sidearm[2].
TIGHAR, of course, is testing
whether the identity of the castaway who died on Nikumaroro was Amelia
Earhart. If we assume for the sake of
our discussion that the identity of the castaway was Amelia Earhart, then we
must eventually ask whether or not there exists any evidence that the
Electra carried firearms.
The
evidence is sketchy, anecdotal and even contradictory at best, but a member of
the family of Fred Noonan's second wife, Mary Bea Martinelli, recalled in an
email that Mary's brother-in-law, Tex Jordan, an actor and friend of Fred
Noonan, used to recount in the 1970s how "he claimed to have taken his
Colt 45 out of his pocket and handed it to Fred just as he was getting on the
plane" at the Oakland Municipal Airport.
Whether the alleged handover of the gun occurred before the first world
flight attempt or before the second is not stated[3].
There is
also a photograph indicating Earhart may have had some experience with using a
handgun[5].
Of
course, none of this anecdotal and photographic evidence can override the fact
that any individuals who were on Nikumaroro could have shot a turtle at the
Seven Site. Dr. Dan Brown, a member of
the group researching the holed plastron, was also correct to point out that
bullets are not the only sources of holes in turtle plastrons. Barnacles are often known to attach to
turtles and over time can sometimes burrow through their shells.
A study
into the details of barnacle behavior as it relates to turtles, however, shows
that while the barnacle hypothesis may be the simplest, it may not be as pat a
rebuttal to the bullet hole hypothesis as it initially seems.
The hole
was located on the plastron of a turtle.
A check of the relevant literature on barnacle behavior with regard to turtles, however, shows that
settlement of barnacles on turtle plastrons is comparatively uncommon. A 2012 study found that 74% (n=125) of the
barnacles settled on the carapace of the turtles studied, whereas only 18.3%
(n=31) settled on the plastron[6]. An earlier study from 1982 arrived at a
similar finding for the most common areas where barnacles settle on turtles[7]. The reason for barnacles' apparent favoring
of the carapace region over the plastron region was found to be an optimal flow
of food and water over these regions. The 1982 study concluded that the number of
available sites where a turtle can bask in the sun and scrape its undersides
has an effect on the number of barnacles that can settle on its body. Sunny areas tend to dry out the
carapace. When a turtle is able to
scrape its undersides frequently, it can more easily rid itself of its
plastron-settling barnacles[8]. Nikumaroro is abundant
in sites where turtles can both bask in the sun and scrape their
undersides. Heavily industrialized
locations tend to present fewer options for turtles to clean themselves. Nikumaroro is not one of these industrialized
areas and thus seems an unlikely location for a turtle to experience invasive
damage from barnacles.
The black
arrow on the right shows an example of scar tissue from a burrowing barnacle.
The holed plastron, further,
lacks a telltale sign that is present in the turtles whose shells are breached
by barnacles. Since barnacles burrow
very slowly over time, the boring action produces noticeable scar tissue on the
interior of the wounds they create[9]. The holed plastron exhibits none of the
scarring on its interior that would be expected if caused by a barnacle.
Barnacles
leave clues when they burrow, but so do bullets. One of the first questions the late
anthropologist Dr. Karen Burns asked when presented with the plastron and its
associated hypotheses was whether it showed signs of surface beveling or
whether the hole was "straight through like a core sample." Bullet wounds typically cause inward beveling
at the entry site and outward beveling at the exit site. The holed plastron seems to show (in this
layman's opinion) a slight inward beveling on the exterior of the plastron.
Analysis by a ballistics expert would be needed, however, to answer definitively
the question of whether the plastron is indeed beveled, or not.
Exterior
view of plastron with circular inward beveling radiating from hole.
Interior
view of holed plastron.
Presuming that the turtle was
shot in its underside by a bullet or, less likely, pierced by a spear, Ric
Gillespie has posited three main possibilities for the holed plastron:
1)
Somebody shot a live turtle with a .22.
2)
Somebody poked a live turtle with a smooth-pointed (no head) spear having about
the same gauge as a .22.
3) Somebody used a dead turtle, or a piece thereof, as a
target for a .22 or spear.
It is
worth noting that the idea of spearing or shooting a turtle for any reason
would seem unwarranted to a Pacific Islander, since their method of preparing
turtles in the early to mid-20th century seems to have consisted of turning
them over on their backs prior to butchering[10].
We have
few firm conclusions we can draw from the turtle bones found, holed or otherwise,
at the Seven Site, but we can say that these bones indicate activity that is
atypical of a Pacific Islander or member of the Coast Guard. Gallagher and the British colonist overseers
of the island remain open candidates for the disposition of these bones, but
they do not appear to be probable ones.
Atypical is not the same as impossible, however. Groups and individuals have been known to
behave atypically. The turtle bones
could represent atypical behavior of one or more of the groups known to visit
the site.
Ascribing
these bones to the activity of the castaway or castaways, whose bones and other
personal effects appear to have been deposited at the Seven Site, seems a
simpler proposition. Overall, we think there
is much information these bones may potentially tell us about how the castaway
of the Seven Site lived and, perhaps, died there.
Endnotes
[1] Interview in 2011 at the Solomon Islands by Gary Quigg, Nancy Farrell, Karl Kern and John Clauss.
[2] Information on Coast Guard weaponry was provided by TIGHAR member Karen Hoy in consultation with Scott T. Price, historian at U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington, D.C. The subject of bullets and shell casings recovered at the Seven Site is very complex and requires a dedicated paper beyond the scope of this article.
[3] This anecdote was obtained from research by Gary LaPook. These and other anecdotes are worthy of mention but need to be assessed in light of the fact that one is secondhand and both occurred many years after the fact. Ric Gillespie, in weighing the value of these kinds of stories, has appropriately cautioned about their value as historical proof: "There is no way to tell unless we can find a written source that is contemporary with the event who had access to the information."
[4] This anecdote was obtained from an interview by Earhart Project Advisory Council member William Webster-Garman.
[5] See http://earchives.lib.purdue.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/earhart&CISOPTR=687&DMSCALE=25&DMWIDTH=600&DMHEIGHT=600&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMMODE=viewer&DMTEXT=%20Earhart%20gun&REC=1&DMTHUMB=1&DMROTATE=0
[6] Eduardo Nájera-Hillman, Julie B. Bass, and Shannon Buckham. (2012). Distribution patterns of the barnacle, Chelonibia testudinaria, on juvenile green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in Bahia Magdalena, Mexico, p. 1174–1176.
Occurrence and Effects of Barnacle Infestations on Diamondback Terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) pp. 35-36.
[8] Siegel, pp. 35-36.
[9] Siegel, pp. 37-38.
The photograph of scar tissue is from Mark Flint, Janet C. Patterson-Kane, Colin J. Limpus, Thierry M. Work, David Blair, Paul C. Mills. (2009). Postmortem diagnostic investigation of disease in free-ranging marine turtle populations: a review of common pathologic findings and protocols.
[10] The practice of hunting turtles in this way is now illegal in many areas. New York State law, for example, prohibits hunting snapping turtles with anything but firearm or bow, and diamondback terrapins must be captured alive. A valid hunting license issued by the state is also required.
Nikumaroro, under the authority of PIPA (Phoenix Islands Protected Area), now forbids all harvesting of green turtles with the exception of subsistence use on Canton Atoll.
See http://whc.unesco.org/document/105314
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