Camp hatches love for science

Turtle adventure immerses girls in fun, learning

Melissa Haneline
The Post and Courier

Samantha Ramsey, 16 (left), and Angelica McCoy, 17, use a seine to collect samples to study Wednesday on the shore of Botany Island. Volunteers and interns with the S.C. Aquarium and Learning through Loggerheads participated in an overnight science camp.

Melissa Haneline
The Post and Courier

Chesney Austin, 13, holds one of three hatchling loggerheads that were found in a nest during an inventory on Botany Island.

Neon fingernails, streaks of punk-green hair, even a couple of navel rings, adorned the teenage girls gathered on Botany Island Wednesday afternoon.

The group of adventurous girls explored the remote locale through a partnership effort between Learning through Loggerheads and the South Carolina Aquarium. Teens affiliated with both organizations signed up for the overnight science camp on the shell-strewn beach.

Angelica McCoy, 17, of North Charleston, said, "I've never been on a boat. I've never slept outside. I'm so excited." The Garrett Academy of Technology student interns at the aquarium and plans to become an obstetrician.

The brainchild of Learning through Loggerheads Director Meg Hoyle, the camping adventure is designed to address two trends among teenage girls.

Some studies show that when girls reach puberty they learn better in same-sex groups, Hoyle said. That's also the same age that many girls lose interest in science.

"We use sea turtles as a vehicle to introduce science as an interesting topic," Hoyle said. "And they don't have to worry about looking good in a bathing suit."

After a walk through a maritime forest and nibbling on some choice leaves, including foliage from a toothache tree, the teenagers jumped into the ocean and trolled the surf with a net for specimens, an activity called seining.

Svenja Xeller, an education program instructor at the aquarium, took each little fish, shrimp and crab out and identified them. While this year's camping trip was only open to aquarium interns and volunteers, next year, organizers hope to make it open to more Lowcountry girls, Xeller said.

The Learning through Loggerheads interns, which are male and female, are paid and mostly hail from Edisto Island and the ACE Basin. They spend the summer checking turtle nests every morning.

The Florence Johnston Scholarship Program, as it is called, is named for the retired science teacher who took Hoyle out to look for turtle nests on Edisto Island when she was a teenager. That experience so impressed Hoyle, she went on to become a biologist and work for the turtle program and the Department of Natural Resources.

"No one can look at nature and not be impressed," she said. "To watch this animal return to this region after 25 years — a cycle that's gone on for more than 200 million years — that's a pretty neat thing to be a part of."

This turtle season, the largest on record since patrols began, has kept the interns busy with more than 300 nests, Hoyle said. Before setting up their tents, the campers huddled around an already-hatched nest and scooped out eggs for counting. Three hatchlings, too weak to make it out, were rescued and coddled before being released near the surf.

But what the teenagers spent their night waiting for, hoping to see, was an adult female turtle, weighing about 300 pounds, lumber ashore after traveling thousands of miles and deposit her eggs.