Kids Check Out, Read the Beach A UGa Program Teaches Awareness of the Coastal Georgia Environment.

By MARY LANDERS

SAVANNAH – On Wassaw Island, 14 children got an early start on their beach reading. It wasn’t the latest Harry Potter or the Twilight series. Instead, they were reading what the beach itself could tell them about waves, wind and the critters that live there.

Take for instance those tiny burrows that pockmark the wet sand. Those were a revelation to Nick Buckley, a rising freshman at Savannah Arts Academy who has thought for the better part of his 14 years that those holes held worms.

Nope. Those are the homes of tiny ghost shrimp that can dig up to four feet below the surface and then chuck their waste material out their front door.

The middle school students learned this and other chapters of the beach’s story on Saturday as part of a University of Georgia program called Students Understanding Resources for the Future, or SURF. It aims to foster awareness of the coastal Georgia environment.

“We’re not looking to create 20 marine scientists, though that would be good,” said Doty Sanders, a marine educator at the UGa extension service. “Our goal is to expose them to the natural environment. Hopefully, they become good stewards themselves.”

Seven months into the program, which met two to three Saturdays a month for field trips, lectures and laboratory experience, it seemed to be working.

“You get to see things you don’t get to see in regular life,” said Shelby Anton, 12, who just finished the sixth grade at St. Andrew’s School.

Their newly trained eyes also see more in their everyday experiences in coastal Georgia, like a trip to the beach.

“I noticed there’s so much more to the sand than I ever noticed before,” Shelby said. “There are all these different patterns.”

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