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Chicago for $5 each, are to be had practically for the asking along the (Mississippi) Gulf Coast, if one has the hardihood to bare his arm to the shoulder and reach into a hole in the mud where the terrapin is enjoying his winter siesta.
“Of course, there is always the chance that the terrapin will wake up and take a nip at the intruding hand, but that is one of the fortunes of war. If yo” beat him to it and drag him out of \ ‘treat, you have the chief ingredient for the finest soup known to epicures. ”
He’s not so big
The diamondback terrapin can be recognized by its spotted skin and the homy, diamond-like plates on its shell. A male’s shell measures 5 inches to 6 inches wide; the female’s, 6 inches to 8 inches.
“The diamondback terrapin is native to this area," said Roger Yea-deke, an aquarium specialist at the Marine Education Center in Biloxi, which displays live terrapin. "They’re not considered endangered today.”
Although other turtles have been used for soup, this one was always a favr \ Perhaps it’s because the wt. .errapin’ sounds more appetizing than ‘turtle, ’ although they are the same.”
1 The culinary demand put diamond-back terrapin in danger of extinction until the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries developed artificial propagation. Several states also passed laws to protect the species.
In the end the terrapin was saved
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In the 1880s Biloxi studied the techniques that made Baltimore the Seafood Capital of the World, used those techniques for shrimp and oysters and eventually claimed the title for itself. Now Biloxi found itself competing with Baltimore in the turtle business.
Coast turtle farms on Back Bay and Deer Island maintained herds of 5,000 to 14,000. An Eastern-bound order for 2,500 was not unusual
The diamondbacks were collected from this region by fishermen, turtle-trained dogs and hunters who delivered hundreds at a time.
One of the best accounts of a Coast turtle firm comes from the memoirs of Dudley Andrews, whose unde George Andrews owned a large, tum-of-the-century turtle farm. In 1981
Going to the market
The farmers raised some turtles through breeding, although most were brought in already on their way to adulthood, or full-grown. They were fed a gourmet diet of chopped oysters.
Once the proper size, they were sold to restaurants for as much as $35 a dozen, a tidy profit.
On market day, the farmers punched breathing holes into large, empty sugar barrels and stacked bve diamondbacks inside, one on top of another. Sometimes wet Spanish moaa was tiuSed between them for cookies* doing their long train ride to the reaUoraat aoup pots.
a Kat Bergeron ia a staff writer for The Sun
Herald.
f
Peter W. Cleveland
Former Law Clerk to the Honorable L. T. Senter, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi
takes pleasure in announcing the opening of his office for the practice of law at the
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