- Maddux Alexander Springer was free diving in Hawaii when he noticed green sea turtles with huge tumors.
- He spent 2.5 years researching the disease and discovered its likely root cause as well as a solution.
- He won the top prize at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, providing $10,000 for college.
Maddux Alexander Springer is spending his pandemic-free time in the blue waters of Oahu.
Every day, the high school student left the seahorses, eels and octopuses in his home aquariums, walked a short distance to Kāneʻohe Bay and free-dived.
“It’s almost like you’re an alien,” Springer, now 18, told Business Insider. “You’re just out there alone in this environment where you don’t really belong.”
Sometimes, though, he seemed to be diving through a graveyard. He kept seeing green sea turtles with cauliflower-like tumors.
“They were just rough masses that were the size of a penny to the size of a football. And that would just encapsulate the green sea turtles,” he said. “They’re on their eyes, on their skin, on their fins, everywhere. And there’s just going to be turtles at the bottom of the ocean just dying there with these tumors.”
He began searching the Internet for an answer. The turtles had a disease called fibropapillomatosis, or FP for short. It affects up to 97 percent of all sea turtles, but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientists don’t fully understand what causes the disease to spread.
That frustrating Google search launched a two-and-a-half-year Springer investigation. Green sea turtles are critical to the health of reefs around the world because they eat algae that would otherwise suffocate coral. After all, FP is a threat to coral reefs everywhere, which are already stressed by rising ocean temperatures and acidity.
Springer may have gotten to the root of the disease’s spread on Oahu. Even better, he found a clear solution.
Last week, he won the $10,000 Peggy Scripps Science Communication Award for his work, which he presented at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair along with over a thousand students. The money is for post-secondary education, but he hopes the prize will bring attention to FP and the plight of sea turtles.
“It was an amazing feeling, just having my research validated,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I felt any change could be made from my research.”
Solving a biological mystery
At the start of his investigation, Springer applied for permits that would allow him to biopsie the turtles’ tumors. But he was denied.
Determined not to give up, he set out to find a non-invasive way to conduct his research. He donned his scuba gear and set up underwater cameras with motion sensors to take pictures of green sea turtles.
Tumors caused by FP can only form internally if they have already formed externally, so these photos gave him a count of all FP-infected turtles in Kāneʻohe Bay. The data confirm his previous observations – FP is highly prevalent.
But the herpes virus that causes FP must be activated by an external factor before it can produce these tumors. Previous biopsies of green sea turtle tumors have shown that they contain high levels of the amino acid arginine. Maybe that was the reason, but where would the turtles get that much arginine?
Algae is the main food source for sea turtles and they are not picky eaters. They will eat any species that is available. Through a photo survey, Springer found that most of the algae in Kāneʻohe Bay are invasive.
This invasive algae is extremely good at absorbing sewage. In fact, it absorbs 11 times more than natural algae and converts the nitrogen-rich wastewater into arginine, which the algae store in their tissues, Springer said.
Indeed, Oahu had a likely source of sewage entering the ocean.
“In Kāneʻohe Bay and Hawaii in general, cesspools are a huge problem,” Springer said.
Septic pits are pits dug under houses to collect waste water. They have no barriers around them, and thus polluted water seeps into Hawaii’s porous, volcanic soil. At high tide, this sewage is drawn into the ocean.
400 hours of seaweed diving
Springer had his suspicions, but he had to check them out.
So he spent his weekends and evenings after school collecting algae samples, drying them and grinding them into powder. Then he sent them to a lab to run through a mass spectrometer, a machine that reveals the elements in a substance.
He was looking for a specific isotope of nitrogen that is associated with human sewage, and he found it. This confirmed that the algae actually absorbed sewage.
Sea turtle food was high in FP-causing arginine.
After two and a half years and 400 hours of diving, Springer discovered a link between rampant FP in Kāneʻohe Bay and sewage pollution.
ISEF student research is not held to the peer review standard that studies published in scientific journals such as Nature must meet. More research is needed to confirm the causal relationship that Springer may have found.
“I believe this study shows that there is a significant relationship between the sewage output and this disease,” Springer said. Without intervention, he fears, this entire marine ecosystem will be devastated.
Saving Hawaii’s Sea Turtles
In total, there are 88,000 cesspools in Hawaii and 11,000 on Oahu alone, according to the Hawaii Department of Health.
Springer says the solution is to get rid of these cesspools and divert domestic wastewater to treatment facilities. This would keep this contaminated water from contaminating Hawaii’s oceans and making sea turtles sick.
Building wastewater treatment facilities and the infrastructure needed to transport sewage to them will be expensive, Springer acknowledged. But based on his research, he thinks it’s a problem that needs urgent attention.
“If we keep going at this rate, and if we keep just dumping raw sewage into the bay, the environmental devastation will be unparalleled,” he said.
But it’s not just the price that stands in the way. In 2017, Hawaii’s legislature passed Act 125, which protects the state from having to eliminate cesspools by 2050. According to Springer, that’s not soon enough.
“Hawaii just really needs to step up, cut the money. I know it will be expensive, but it will be worth it in the end because 2050 is an unacceptable date and it has to happen now or unforeseen environmental devastation will occur,” he said.
The state legislature is currently considering a bill that would begin imposing “pollution fees” on homeowners who have septic tanks by 2025. That money would go toward a new septic tank mitigation fund, Honolulu reports Civil Beat.
This may be a step in the right direction, but Springer hopes his research will help bring more attention to the urgency of this problem.
“I just really want to raise awareness that this is a problem and that the only way it can be solved is through government intervention,” he said.
Springer plans to continue her science career at Oregon State University, where she will earn a bachelor’s degree in marine biology.
“I’m excited to explore somewhere new and do more research on new problems that exist because research is problem-driven,” he said. “I feel like it’s going to be a fun way to get more into research and delve into the issues that fundamentally control our environment and manage our ecosystem.”
