Every year, thousands of newly hatched loggerhead sea turtles are distracted by lights from the road. They turn away from the ocean and crawl towards the road instead, where most of these turtles are killed. This horrific event, which reoccurs nearly every day, led us to create this project, which displays a loggerhead sea turtle heading towards the road, rather than the ocean. Our project displays many aspects of saving these creatures. The shells which are glued to the outside of our project are painted with gold detailing. The gold paint symbolizes that there is hope for giving these animals a brighter future and that conservation is possible. The shells on the back of the turtle are not painted with gold paint. This shows that until we take action, thousands of turtles, like the one in our project, do not have this same hope. Remembering all of the turtles who have already lost their lives to this tragedy is an important part of saving the remaining turtles.

     The environment is a beautiful thing, but it is sadly damaged and littered on by people who choose not to respect it. Animals such as the loggerhead, attempt to eat this trash, causing them to choke and die. This problem could be solved, if people simply reused and recycled their trash, as shown in our project. The outside box that we used would have otherwise been thrown away. The cardboard that we used to build up the inside of our project would have been put to waste. The broken crayons, that we melted down to make an ocean, would have gone unused by students. Just reusing small items like these can save the lives of thousands of loggerheads who choke on the “trash”. We hope that our project will inspire people to make a difference by helping conserve these amazing creatures and keeping the beach clean.

 

For our project we created a hand capturing fireflies. The fireflies are endangered and need our help. The blue background and green clay represent the coast of Georgia. The hand, made out of plaster, represents mankind’s influence on the environment, and the black net is pollution. Humans are in control of many things in the environment, and some of these things are hindering the livelihood of our surroundings and the creatures in it. People are responsible for much of the pollution that destroys the environment. The fireflies are made of rolled gold and glittered model magic.We were inspired to make our project because in other areas of the country, we’ve seen fireflies and enjoyed their small flickering lights. In our area, fireflies used to be seen nightly; however, now they are never seen. There are many places where they used to be seen. Many families would wait for them to appear, but their numbers have greatly decreased in recent years. Families cannot enjoy their nights without fireflies. They light up the night with their tiny floating lamps, and they are so fun to catch and release. We want their lights to stay lit.

We want them to live on!

 

We chose to focus on saving the humpback whale because we like this breed of whale.  Humpback whales migrate along Georgia’s coast every year to breed.  The humpbacks are medium-sized whales averaging forty-six feet in length and weighing up to forty-seven tons.  Humpbacks are generally grayish-black on their back contrasting with white flippers, sides, and belly. The most distinctive feature of humpbacks is their long white flippers that can be up to a third of their total body length. The white pigmentation gives their flippers the appearance of long, bluish-green wings when seen through the water.

 

The humpback whales are endangered due to many factors.  Sadly, they become entangled in commercial fishing gear like many other sea creatures.  They also collide with boats and barges, and these collisions are sometimes deadly.  In addition, these whales are killed for food and oil.

 

We tried to make the whale as realistic as possible.  We painted the whale dark blue because it would have that unique color in the water.  We used a nice clean blue color to represent the clean environment that all ocean creatures should live in. The net is red representing all of the past’s injured and dead whales due to accidents and fishing.  We made an origami boat on the surface to represent a commercial fishing boat.