Jessica Johnson, a seventh-grade science teacher and club sponsor for The Green Team at Bayside Middle, has a longstanding relationship with a certain four-flippered reptile: the sea turtle.

For five years, Johnson has volunteered as a part of the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center’s stranding team, which helps rehabilitate injured and abandoned wildlife. In the course of her work, Johnson worked with turtles that had been hit by propellers, tangled in crab pots and ingested pollution.

Specifically, she has studied x-rays of turtles whose intestines are filled with swallowed balloons and plastic, and that helped her take action.

Johnson has worked with The Green Team to raise awareness throughout the school and community about the dangers of releasing balloons in the air, since the balloons will eventually deflate, land in the ocean and be eaten by turtles who mistake them for jellyfish.

Under her advising, The Green Team chose pollution of the ocean as its emphasis at the school, and members have been working to coordinate beach clean-up events sponsored by the city’s Green Team network. In addition, they have created a model turtle filled with balloons collected from local beaches as a way to advertise the dangers of polluting. The creation has become a popular fixture on Bayside’s walls and has been named the “Trash Talking Turtle.”

For more information about how to start a Green Team in your building, visit www.earthshare.org/greenteams.