Yabby traps catch more than yabbies

After our friends, Vivien and Glen, who stayed with us almost a week, had returned from a spot of fishing in our creek, they gave me the sad news that they had discovered a yabby trap along the bank, among the grass. They also told me that it contained the remnants of a number of freshwater turtles. I was horrified and dumb-struck and sickened.  They offered to go down and retrieve the trap, so Steve and I walked down to the creek with them and Glen and I quickly located the trap again. Sure enough, inside the death chamber were the remains, just the carapaces and plastrons, of four short-necked turtles, including one young animal that you can see on the left of the others. Again, I just couldn't believe that someone could set such a trap -  knowing that other animals could easily find their way in through the openings, and then drown. And I wonder, with dread, how many hundreds or even thousands of similar traps are lying on the bottom of creeks and rivers, while the putrefying carcasses of turtles, water rats and platypus, slowly rot within them.  This is completely irrational, I accept, but I felt a twinge of guilt that these turtles, which I might have enjoyed seeing sometime in the past, as they sunned themselves on protruding rocks or logs, had drowned, silently, in our creek.
We hauled the trap from the bank and took it back home. It won't be catching any more turtles again.