This summer I had the privilege of going on an Alternative Summer Break through CMU. Alternative Breaks (AB) work by having students sign up to work for a cause they are passionate about, not knowing where they are going or what they will doing. 12 students go on each break, and they meet weekly to become educated on the issue they are going to be working with. A couple weeks after signing up, the group figures out what service they will be doing and where they will be going for their week of service.
Ever since I was little I have had this crazy amount of love for animals. Since coming to college I have also become very passionate about the environment and saving the earth we live on. So, I signed up for the break that deals with the issue of Animal Endangerment. We found out that we were going to be traveling to Palm Beach, FL to help baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, and yes, it is as perfect as it sounds.
So, me and twelve girls packed into two mini vans and drove to Palm Beach. The first day there we spent time getting to know the area and visiting the GORGEOUS beach that we were going to be doing some of our service on. We make our own meals throughout our week, so we went grocery shopping and set up at the Faith Lutheran church we were staying at.
Throughout the week we spent long days doing service. We arrived at the beach at 6 A.M. every morning to work with the Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island. We worked with this woman Debbie, who started the Sea Turtle program on Singer Island herself. Debbie is a woman who, though I only spent a week with her, she has made a huge impact on my life. Everything Debbie says inspires the people around her to do whatever they are passionate about. She has had numerous jobs throughout the years and all of them were because she felt a pull to them at that time because it was her passion. She said “I would get these brainstorms of what I wanted to do, and I had to do it.” She started the Sea Turtle program after already having children and having a career. She wanted to save the turtles, and so she did just that. Debbie does all of this program solely based on volunteering. She and her volunteers, and us for the week we were there, spend 4 hours every morning walking the beach, helping baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, excavating old sea turtle nests, marking new sea turtle nests, and documenting hatched nests.
After working in the mornings with Debbie, we would head over to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center to volunteer with them. Loggerhead is a sea turtle rehabilitation center that helps rescue turtles of any age and nurse them back to health, to have them later released back into the ocean. Loggerhead was the most amazing place I have visited to see animals. They don’t treat the turtles any different than how a patient at a rehabilitation center that was a human would be treated. When volunteering with Loggerhead, we did any type of work that they needed help with, the majority of this being painting the pier they own. We also helped them with yard work stuff in the front of the building. Even though we were not directly working with the turtles at this point, there is still so much reward to be gained from doing indirect service.
Our last service trip stop of the day was to MacArthur State Park. While working at MacArthur State Park, we helped remove invasive species, trim trails, and clean up trash from trails. This service was probably the service that was the most difficult for my group simply because we were usually doing service here at the peak heat of the day in long pants and shirt in the middle of August. However, this work was work that really helped fire up my love for the environment. Seeing all of the trash that is left around is heartbreaking, and so being able to help contribute to making the world a cleaner place was the ultimate win.
This trip taught me more than I could ever imagine. Sea Turtles are endangered and only 1 in 10,000 sea turtles make it to adulthood. Most nests have around 100 turtle hatchlings in them. This means that a lot of nests are overall unsuccessful. I saw a lot of nests that not a lot of the sea turtles made it to the surface of the sand alive because they get fried in the sand as a result of rising temperatures. When sea turtles do make it out the sand, many do not make it to the water because of the amount of light that is on from buildings, hotels, and condos that lead them in the wrong direction. A lot of sea turtles are harmed once they get in the ocean because of the amount of trash that is left in the ocean. Overall, I just learned how much of an impact our everyday actions can impact the animals around us. Even though so many sea turtles don’t make it to adulthood, and we can only help so many in a week, it is important to remember that we may not have saved all the turtles, but we were able to help some. Any is better than none.
A few things that I have started changing about my everyday life to lessen my carbon footprint and help support the environment:
- I was already a vegetarian before this trip, but this AB has reiterated my reasons for doing so
- I no longer use plastic grocery bags
- I limit my use of plastic straws
- I do not drink out of plastic water bottles
My AB was one of the best weeks of my life because of the work I got to do, and the people I got to connect with. You can bet I will go on another Alternative Break this winter.