Girl Scout Gold Award

Carolyn Caggia, a member of the Green Hope High Environmental Club, has dedicated her time to educating the public and government policy makers about entanglement of endangered sea turtles in gillnets in NC. After visiting the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Topsail Island, NC years ago, she has wanted to do a grass roots advocacy effort to help save the sea turtles and chose this as her Girl Scout Gold Award project.

Stamp Out Gillnet Fishing

Working with the NC Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, Caggia created a “Save the Sea Turtle” exhibit at one of the Museum’s events attended by 12,000 visitors. She had a scroll that visitors of all ages could stamp to help “stamp out” gillnet fishing and received over 1,500 stamps.

Sponsoring a Bill

She created an educational booklet about all of the threats to sea turtles, which is being reproduced and distributed to all the rental houses on Emerald Isle, NC. She showed this scroll and the booklet to six NC legislators in meetings resulting in one Representative agreeing to sponsor a bill to find a compromise between fishing and endangered sea turtle survival.

Vote For An Ocean Hero

For her efforts, Caggia was selected to compete in the Ocean Heroes Contest. People who vote in the contest also support Oceana, who has a sponsor making a $1 donation to the organization for each vote received. The deadline for voting is May 26.

Find more about the Ocean Heroes program.

Vote for Carolyn –>

• Click on the badge above. Enter some basic info.
• On page 2, select Carolyn (as well as an adult). You can see bios of the nominees by clicking in the individual pictures.

Pass our story on to your friends and support this activist Cary student.