Youth Conservationist of the Year

PhytoFinders of Kitty Hawk

Many of us grew up during an age when environmental education meant seeing who could keep a hard-boiled egg spinning on a desktop the longest. Bring up the term “dinoflagellates” in my 9-grade science class and Mrs. Lomax would have you out in the hall in 3 seconds flat. She’d growl, “grab your ankles,” and you’d wish you’d worn your extra thick corduroys to school.

That was America.

This is not the case at First Flight High School in Kitty Hawk. There, a group of student volunteers called the PhytoFinders spend a couple of hours each Thursday afternoon stuck to a microscope, not a wide-screen television. They keep track of diatoms and dinoflagellates, not who has the most songs downloaded on their iPods. Under the leadership of science teacher Katie Neller, this group of students monitorr the waters around Duck, North Carolina, for possible harmful algal blooms. In April of 2005, the young researchers reported the first occurrence of toxic Psuedo-nitzschia delicaatissima known from the Bay of Fundy all the way to Florida. PhytoFinders documented another harmful bloom in September of 2007. Their sampling efforts have led to a number of genuine scientific discoveries—including the determination that Pseudo-nitzschia’s toxins were causing the mortality of dwarf sperm whales along the coasts of both Carolinas. NOAA scientists have lauded the PhytoFinders efforts, and their work has even made it to the journals of the blockbuster scientific publication, Plankton News!

I don’t want to even think about Mrs. Lomax’s reaction to the term Pseudo-nitzschia in my old classroom. And the mention of “dwarf sperm whales….” I can smell burning denim right now.

But that was America.

These days, we can all feel good about young men and women who are using brave new ways of taking brave new observations about the new world we inhabitat. When I think about the First Flight PhytoFinders, I feel pretty good about the America they are committed to protecting. Katie Neller’s PhytoFinders are the 2007 Youth Conservationists of the Year.

Regular PhytoFinders from First Flight High School include Katlin Allsbrook, Alyssa Gill, Corinne Guard, Liz Jungen, Lauren Nelson, Justin Robey, Austen Stovall, Tyler Stublin and Logan Wilkerson.