Forget lanyards and friendship bracelets. This week's summer camp souvenir was a firsthand look at a shark's heart. Campers at the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW) grabbed their gloves and scalpels on July 21 to dissect sharks as part of the nonprofit's summer Osprey Camp.
"This camp right now is what we call Osprey Camp, which means it is a mix of middle and high school, and where they do a little bit more," said Brittany Laster, CROW's education outreach coordinator. "It's not just summer camp activities. They're also actively trying to learn, as much as they may fight that."
Jordan Bryant, education and communications intern at CROW, said roughly 100 million sharks are killed each year. She hopes that exposing kids to a shark's anatomy will replace fear with respect.
"Sharks are not actually scary," Bryant said. "They are really like the puppies of the sea."
Puppies with a few hundred extra teeth, maybe — but Bryant said the point is to heighten awareness about the marine fish.
"It's really important to be able to tell the kids how to have compassion for animals, just in general, and just life," she said. "Seeing the purpose of this animal and understanding that the reason it died was for educational purposes."
Bryant clarified that the spiny dogfish sharks used for dissection are not pulled from the ocean.
"All of our lab dissections, every animal or organism that we receive, is lab grown or specifically raised in a lab setting for the intent of education," she said.
And once the lesson wraps up, the sharks don't get a dramatic send-off.
"So, we do just get rid of them through the trash," Laster said. "It doesn't sound pretty, but it is a safe way to do it. There's no biohazard at all with these. They've been sterilized."
For Bryant, the dissection was also a personal first — she'd never actually touched a shark before.
"Holding its heart in my hand, that was really, really awesome," she said. "I may have taken more from it than the kids, but as long as they took something from it, I'm happy."
Fourteen-year-old camper Vanessa Musser didn't share the enthusiasm at first glance.
"That's kind of disgusting" was Musser's first reaction after the sharks were taken out of the plastic bags and set on the table to examine.
However, by the end of the dissection and cleanup, her disgust had worn off.
"It was really cool to be able to see inside of the shark and see how all the different parts work together," she said. "A lot of the organs didn't look how you'd think they would."
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