Savannah Difference Makers: Chantal Audran imbues her love of Georgia's coast through education

The vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean is a mere few miles from Savannah, its coastal waters teeming with turtles, jellyfish, and other aquatic life.

But for many local school children, the sea and its inhabitants remain a mystery until their first field trip to the Tybee Island Marine Science Center. Before the pandemic, the center’s partnership with public Title 1 schools brought an estimated 40,000 students a year through the “Sidewalk to the Sea” program, and attendance is expected to meet that once again with the dawn of the new school year.

“Our goal is to get their feet wet and their hands dirty,” says Chantal Audran, acting director of TIMSC. “We want them to connect with the natural world.”

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Audran, who has recently taken over the center’s top title from longtime Executive Director Maria Procopio, has been leading educational programming and camps for eight years, back when the center’s touch tanks and exhibits occupied the squat concrete building next to the Pier on the island’s south end.

“People were really shocked by those numbers at the old center because we were so small,” she recalls. “We really made some magic in that little building. But really, the field is our classroom — the beach, the marsh, the water.”

When TISMC’s new 5,000 square-foot facility opened last year with bigger exhibits, wraparound ocean views and a touch tank full of hermit crabs and starfish, it expanded the marine scientist’s platform to share her passion for ocean conservation and environmental stewardship. While she loves sharing Tybee’s treasures with visitors, it’s the students that deepen the meaning of her work.

“It’s the most fun to orient a child who is from here to the beauty that is their home,” muses the self-described “science nerd.

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“To me, it always comes back to education. Without knowing the information and instilling that love, you can’t protect it.”

It all started with squid eyeballs

Audran learned to appreciate the sea as a school-aged kid herself.

Born in land-locked Oklahoma to a Native American mother and a French father near the Otoe-Missouria reservation where her mother grew up, she and her family traveled around the country to follow her father’s numerous positions as a head chef in the hospitality industry.

“I attended twelve schools in nine states,” she says, ticking off California, Maryland, and Florida on her fingers — all places on the coast.

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“The salt air was all around me, and in me — it’s in my blood.”

Her curiosity about the ocean’s creatures became more formal the summer she was 14, when she tagged along with her best friend’s family to Cape Cod. Her friend’s father was a marine biologist at the storied Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and gave the teenage girls a job.

“We took squid eyeballs out for him and got paid a quarter an eyeball,” remembers Audran, laughing at the memory of dissecting the sea animals and squirting ink at each other across the lab.

That experience also piqued her interest in marine biology as a discipline as she observed actual scientists at work.

“I was like, who are you? You’re crazy smart, but you’re wearing sandals and a Bermuda shirt. You’re not the scientist I learned about in school,” she says of spending the summer in the laboratory that smelled like coffee, brine, and formaldehyde.

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“From then on I knew exactly what I wanted to do, to be in the marine science field. It wasn’t a question.”

She returned to Cape Cod with her friend’s family every summer during high school to work in the lab and teach day campers about the wonders of the water. After graduation, she enrolled first at Loyola University in Chicago where she played collegiate soccer, then finished out her biology degree at Georgia Southern, closer to where her parents had settled for a time to open a new hotel.

When her folks moved on to another city, she decided to stay in Savannah. Her first job out of school was at the UGA Marine Extension on Skidaway Island as an education coordinator, which combined her love of teaching with her growing knowledge of the rich biodiversity of the Georgia coast.

“I love the marsh. It’s where life starts for the ocean, it’s the nursery grounds,” she explains, describing the myriad plants, invertebrates, birds, crustaceans, and fish that depend on the complex ecological web.

‘Education is the crux of who I am’

While she loves being the kind of scientist who wears Teva sandals and leggings printed with sharks to work, it’s what she’s passing on to students that matters to her most.

“Education has always been a huge part of my personal mission, it’s the crux of who I am. It comes quite naturally to me to explain something complex and bring it down to a kiddo,” says the marine biologist, who spends her free time coaching local girls’ soccer teams.

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“As scientists. we love to be really articulate and use our fancy Latin words, but sometimes that’s not good when you’re talking to a six-year-old.”

An ebullient and enthusiastic teacher who’s not afraid to throw around the word “dude,” Audran drops marine knowledge while keeping hands busy.

Many Sidewalk to Sea students participate in the Diamond Terrapin Conversation Program, which begins when TISMC staff excavates eggs from turtles killed on Highway 80 and sends them to Georgia Southern to be incubated and hatched. The hatchlings are then raised at the center for about a year — “until they’re the size of a fist” — then released back into the sea with joyful fanfare.

Her tenure on Tybee has allowed her to see many of the kids who splash through her programs grow up to reflect back what they’ve learned.

“In second grade, they learn all the species of jellies, then they come back as fifth graders and they still remember,” says the marine educator who was once suspected by a student of being a mermaid.

“When you’ve been somewhere so long you get to see the impact, that’s an incredible gift.”

‘Stewardship is in the mission’

Audran takes care not only to cultivate familiarity with individual species but also appreciation for the entire coastal ecosystem — and its fragility. But she notes that defending against development, climate change, and other issues takes the entire community.

“It’s in our mission that we leave everyone with a sense of stewardship for this beautiful coastal Georgia environment, and it’s also my personal goal,” she avows.

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“If we can spark the curiosity for them and they leave us and take action, that’s going to better the world. But it’s not one person or one scientist — it’s all of us.”

For many Chatham-area students, that curiosity begins under the watch of Audran and her sea-loving staff. Some of her favorite moments are introducing children for the first time to the ocean at Tybee, uniquely greenish brown from the rich soup of plankton, sediment, and rich marine life.

““There is this huge spectrum of reactions. Some are awe-inspired,” she says with a smile. “Then there’s that one kid who says, ‘’That’s it? I thought it’d be bigger.’”

Jessica Leigh Lebos is a writer, adopted southerner, anti-socialite, and camellia thief. She delivers fresh content every week at savannahsideways.com, and her book "Savannah Sideways" is available at your favorite local independent bookstore.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Tybee Island Marine Science Center provides ocean education for youth