This high schooler won $10,000 because he saw a mysterious outbreak killing sea turtles in his Hawaii hometown and decided to do something about it

• 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, plus a solution.
• He won a top award at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, securing $10,000 for college.

Maddux Alexander Springer spent his pandemic free time in Oahu's blue waters.

Every day the high schooler left the sea horses and eels and octopuses in his at-home fish tanks, walked a short distance to Kāneʻohe Bay, and went free diving.

"It's almost like you're an alien," Springer, who is now 18, told Business Insider. "You're just there by yourself in this environment that you don't really belong in."

Sometimes, though, it seemed like he was diving through a graveyard. He kept seeing green sea turtles with cauliflower-like tumors.

"They were just gross masses that were anywhere from the size of a penny to the size of a football. And it would just encapsulate the green sea turtles," he said. "They're on their eyes, their skin, their flippers, everywhere. And there would just be turtles on the bottom of the ocean just dying there with these tumors."

He started scouring the internet for an answer. The turtles had a disease called fibropapillomatosis, or FP for short. It affects up to 97% 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 disappointing Google search launched Springer into a two-and-a-half year investigation. Green sea turtles are crucial for the health of reefs worldwide, as they eat algae that would otherwise suffocate the coral. Ultimately, 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 in Oahu. Even better, he found a clear solution.

Last week he won the $10,000 Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication 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 also bring attention to FP and the plight of sea turtles.

"It was an incredible feeling, just having my research validated," he said. "It's been a very long time since I have felt like some change can be made from my research."

Solving a biological mystery

At the beginning of his investigation, Springer applied for permits that would allow him to biopsy 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 diving gear and set up motion-sensing underwater cameras to snap photos of green sea turtles.

The tumors caused by FP can only form internally if they've already formed externally, so these pictures gave him a census of all the FP-infected turtles in Kāneʻohe Bay. The data confirmed his previous observations — FP was highly prevalent.

But the herpesvirus that causes FP must be activated by an external factor before it can produce those tumors. Previous biopsies of green sea turtle tumors had shown that they contained high levels of the amino acid arginine. Maybe that was the trigger, but where would the turtles get so much arginine?

Algae is a sea turtle's main food source, and they're not picky eaters. They'll eat whatever type is available. Through a photo survey, Springer found that most of the algae in Kāneʻohe Bay is invasive.

This invasive algae is extremely good at absorbing sewage. In fact, it absorbs 11 times more than native algae and converts the wastewater's rich nitrogen into arginine, which the algae stores in its tissues, Springer said.

Indeed, Oahu had a likely source of sewage entering the ocean.

"In Kāneʻohe Bay, and in Hawaii overall, cesspools are a huge problem," Springer said.

Cesspools are pits dug beneath houses to collect wastewater. They have no barriers around them, and thus contaminated water leeches into Hawaii's porous, volcanic soil. During high tide, that wastewater gets pulled into the ocean.

400 hours of diving for algae

Springer had his suspicions, but he needed to test them out.

So he spent his weekends and evenings after school collecting algae samples, drying them, and crushing them into a powder. Then, he sent them off 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's associated with human wastewater, and he found it. That confirmed that the algae was, in fact, absorbing wastewater.

The sea-turtle food was rich in FP-causing arginine.

After two and a half years and 400 hours of diving, Springer found a link between rampant FP in Kāneʻohe Bay and wastewater pollution.

Students' research at ISEF is not held to the peer-review standard that studies published in scientific journals like Nature must meet. More research is needed to confirm the causal link Springer may have discovered.

"I believe this study shows that there is a significant relationship between wastewater output and this disease," Springer said. Without intervention, he fears that 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 Hawaii's Department of Health.

Springer says that the solution is to get rid of these cesspools and divert residential wastewater to treatment facilities. That would keep this contaminated water from polluting Hawaii's oceans and making sea turtles sick.

Building wastewater treatment facilities and the infrastructure needed to transport sewage to them would be expensive, Springer admitted. But based on his research, he thinks this is an issue that requires urgent attention.

"If we continue to go at this rate, and if we continue to just release raw wastewater into the bay, the environmental devastation is going to be unparalleled," he said.

But it's not just cost that stands in the way. In 2017, Hawaii's legislature passed Act 125, which protects the state from having to remove cesspools until 2050. To Springer, that's not nearly soon enough.

"Hawaii just really needs to step up, put the money down. I know it'll be expensive, but in the end it'll be worth it because 2050 is an unacceptable date, and it needs to happen now or unforeseen environmental devastation will occur," he said.

Currently, the state legislature is considering a bill that would begin imposing "pollution fees" on homeowners who have cesspools by 2025. That money would funnel into a new fund for mitigating the effects of cesspools, Honolulu Civil Beat reports.

It may be a step in the right direction, but Springer hopes that his research will help draw more attention to the urgency of this issue.

"I just really want to raise awareness that this is an issue, and that the only way that this can be solved is by government intervention," he said.

Springer has plans to further his scientific career at Oregon State University, where he'll pursue 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 deeper into the issues that fundamentally control our environment and run our ecosystem."