OCNJ Daily

Reed Herr carefully stepped down into the marsh. The 6-year-old tightly grasped a 3-inch terrapin that had been raised in Stockton University’s Animal Lab, and he eagerly awaited his chance to return it to the wild. “Do you have a name for your turtle?” asked Lisa Ferguson, the Wetlands Institute’s director of Research and Conservation. “Puddles!” Herr replied with a smile on his face. Puddles was just one of hundreds of injured turtles collected annually by the institute and nurtured and rehabbed by Stockton students and staff as part of the Diamondback Terrapin Rescue Project.