The Beaufort Marine Institute

"Marine" in the title does not refer to the U.S. Marines, nor to a place where boats are worked on. Most people driving up U.S. 17 past Lobeco see the sign on the right and probably have no idea what it might refer to. But the Beaufort Marine Institute has helped mend the lives of hundreds of "troubled" boys who might otherwise have continued to go wrong. The BMI is indeed an institute, in the old sense of a place where students are taught proper conduct, and it does have a connection with the sea.

The physical plant is not unlike a Boy Scout camp–intentionally Spartan, utilitarian, without frills. Signs along the vehicle path in the grounds of the BMI name such virtues as "Loyalty," "Family," "Honesty," "Integrity,"
"Diversity," "Leadership," "Enthusiasm," "Dedication," "Creativity," "Safety." All those virtues are taken seriously here. An air of military discipline and orderliness energizes the whole place. Here are dormitories, there is the administration building; there is the donated swimming pool to teach the kids how to avoid scary situations at sea, there is the mess-hall; and there are the classroom buildings with small libraries and banks of donated computers.

In between the buildings are sandy soil and tall pines. We are on an island, a sea island accessed by a causeway, not far from deep water; but we are also in the boondocks, miles from any town’s temptations, down a dirt road. The kids who come here, boys between the ages of 14 and 17, have all been in trouble more than once. They grow to like the quiet seclusion.

Within the last fiscal year, 2005-2006, the BMI had an amazing 100% completion rate, which means that all of the students who graduated in 2006 have remained for their whole term. Also, only about 28% of recent graduates (they graduate in about five months, and return to their homes) are repeat offenders. The BMI is a model for other recovery programs around the state. BMI represents a desirable place, not a Dickensian group home, and the atmosphere there is more like a family than of an institution.

The young men come from Charleston as well as Walterboro, and from Columbia as well as from Yemasee: they may be street smart or farm wise. They may have arrived tough and lacking in respect for father, mother, or any older member of society. They may have come out of a drug-dealing gang that offered them an appealing home on the street as compared with a home without a father, or a home with alcoholism or crime ever-present. Some have sold marijuana or cocaine in various forms; some have been led into fights which the law calls assaults. All have probation officers who have provided their names and files to the BMI for possible admission.

When I asked one of the boys what his offense was, Dariell’s voice and face dropped as he answered me, "Yes sir, I was busted for possession AND selling marijuana." He was obviously ashamed and embarrassed. The attitude of the boys towards their crimes and misdemeanors seems to be one of genuine contrition and confession, not one of hardened pride in criminal achievement.

The name Beaufort Marine Institute might also be a little misleading because the local chapter, founded in the 1980s, is now part of the Associated Marine Institutes, based in Tampa, Florida. The AMI originated in Boca Raton under the auspices of Florida Atlantic University’s Florida Ocean Sciences Program, and it took shape with the guidance of a benevolent judge trying in 1968 to find something useful and educational for troubled kids to do (to take them to sea, among other things, and show them the necessarily-disciplined life of a sailor under command): thus the "Marine."

The BMI aims to be a successful home for wayward boys, taking kids with budding criminal careers and setting a strict rule over them, trying to help with what is called the unified approach–concentrating on their education; channeling their teen energy into sports, camping, and meaningful labor; and taking them out to sea after they have learned swimming, diving, and other maritime skills.

Of course rules are necessary, more than in a Boy Scout camp. Students get in line and march to breakfast or the work-place; they announce when they are leaving a building; they answer adults always with "Yes, sir," or "Yes, ma’am." They introduce themselves politely to strangers.

What I have observed while becoming a Board member is that at the BMI "behavior modification" is a positive thing. The institution builds mutual respect for adults and for the other boys. The boys learn self-discipline, they begin to practice politeness and mutual respect as a way of life, they accept military or marine models of rank and rewards, and they come to understand that hard and gratifying work is in itself the better alternative than a life of petty crime. They certainly leave believing in the value of education. When I have asked a group of four kids whether they want to go to college, they all said "Yes sir," without hesitation.

BMI is very much about role-models, and the teachers and administrators there try to be good models. The 32-member staff of the BMI represent kindly father-figures or mother-figures, administers of compassion rather than just keepers of rule-books. They may offer the first evidence of loving kindness a tough boy has ever experienced.

One of the best models, judging by the boys’ enthusiasm for his teaching, is Larry Peck, a retired biochemical engineer, a grandfatherly type who knows everything about boats and seamanship, takes them out and gives lessons in marine life, the way a grandfather should. The kids admire him, and he has affection for them. Together, they re-build marine engines and paint donated boats so that they can be used or sold to help raise money for BMI. The boys are learning useful, marketable skills, and they love to learn from Larry. "I have one kid who wants to study underwater welding," Larry told me, "and that pays well, even if it is dangerous." As I watched, Larry showed several of the kids how to hold and cast a shrimp net from the campus dock, and we even brought up a few shrimp. "The kids love him," Amy Nevells, Director of the BMI, tells me. Meanwhile, the kids working for her or for Larry earn "recognition points" for such virtues as leadership, good attitude, respect, appearance, and participation, and those points help them rise in the ranks. By the time they leave, very few of the boys should be called "troubled" any longer.

The boats and engines Larry and the kids paint and restore to working order have all been donated by local individuals or businesses. Of course the Beaufort Marine Institute takes cash donations as well (call 843-846-2128), and the BMI Board of Trustees sponsors a very popular croquet tournament at Bray’s Island every spring, which this year raised more than $30,000 for operating expenses. There is no greater asset to the Beaufort community than the Beaufort Marine Institute.

Graduation at BMI in 2008: Leviticus and his mom, who forgave him

No-see-ums

"I am faint: my gashes cry for help."

So says the bloody Sergeant in Macbeth. When the no-see-ums were out, we members of the cast knew what the bloody Sergeant was talking about. The chainsaw jaws of those tiny diptera cut into our unprotected scalp and hands. Tiny gashes cried out for help. After a bombardment of what are sometimes called sand flies, gnats, or midges–most heavily at dusk but at other times during the day or the night as well–the backs of our hands were red with slapping and decorated with little dots of blood, our ears itched like crazy, and our scalps were on fire.

No real-estate agent tells you about the no-see-ums unless you ask a pointed question. No Chamber of Commerce pamphlet tells you not to go near the marshes when the gnats are out. Quietly, the natives of this area say no-see-ums are placed here by God to keep the Yankees out.

How can you tell you are becoming a native? Because if you are native, they don’t bother you as much. They even seem to go to tourists first. They are like alligators or copperheads or Marine fly-overs: you just learn to live with them. The "Beaufort salute" is a swipe with your hand in front of your face, to keep them out of your eyes.

The one-two punch of tiny mosquitoes and even tinier no-see-ums can leave a tourist dizzy and drained. It is the female of both of those species who is to blame. As Macbeth says, "Blood will have blood." These female flies are blood-hungry. They need it to feed their babies-to-be, and they may get it in a kamikaze raid, knowing that their bite hurts and that many of them will be killed by wildly slapping hands or madly itching fingers. If they could think and laugh, they might chuckle at the spectacle of grown men and women slapping their heads, looking like the little moron who kept hitting himself because it felt so good when he quit.

To defend against them, people spray a fog of Deet in the air and walk into it, as if they were testing perfume and inhaling toxic waste at the same time. Other people, even non-smokers, ask cigarette addicts to blow smoke in their hair, to make no-see-ums cough and get sick. When I sprayed Off directly into my hair, I got the strong impression that the little buggers were slime-skiing between my hair-follicles, enjoying themselves on the slalom course. Either that or they were still biting as they died.

The only chemistry that seems to work against no-see-ums, as far as the intelligentsia of Beaufort can tell, is an expensive skin cream (or lotion or spray) marketed by the Avon lady and local drug stores called Skin-So-Soft (no , I am not an Avon lady). The product started life as a skin-rejuvenator, something like Oil of Olay, but actors on location in some country below the Equator discovered that the product they were applying on their face to keep it forever young was also keeping the bugs off. Something in the product–its viscosity, its deep chemistry, or its cheap perfumy smell–worked to keep the gnats from doing their job.

Here in Beaufort the gnats breed in the marshes, the tidal wetlands. There are so many of them and they breed too fast for us to have any clue how to control them yet, though perhaps we may be able to trap them using an approximation of human scent and a zapper. We may all soon be installing bat-houses on marsh property, since bats seem to love to eat small diptera and mosquitoes. And those scientists who like to alter DNA might be able to shift a gene or two in the no-see-ums so that they develop a taste for alligator blood and leave us humans alone. As they now are, they have evolved until they have become flying motor-mouths, with powerful swept-back wings covered with spots for camouflage. As soon as they land, they dig in until you slap at them, and even then they seem to die happy, having succeeded in their mission to make your life miserable and feed their children at the same time. My scalp itches just thinking about it.

I remember one horrible time when I had to wade through pluff mud to the edge of the swamp grass to collect a floating kayak paddle. I was in shorts and a flimsy shirt, wearing high rubber boots, and the boots stirred up the no-see-ums. I felt like a water buffalo at the edge of the water hole, where all the killer flies hung out. Water buffalos go crazy under such attacks.

You will pay for foggers, for aerosol cans, for creams, for lotions. They all stink and sting. Skin-So-Soft costs about $7 for a little bottle of lotion, but it does spread thinly, and it does seem to work. Perhaps it is a Yankee invention, to help us remain in beautiful Beaufort.

The Society of Shrimpers at Low Tide

The shrimpers don’t expect much, and they are happy with little: five or six shrimp of varying sizes in a half-hour, treading water in the bottom of a drywall-mud bucket.

The styles of humans casting casting nets vary. Among the casters, there are front-tossers, backhand-flippers, teeth-grippers, and lazy down-droppers. I spent twenty minutes in the WalMart fish section, reading the labels of the various casting net packages, after I had been tossing the net for almost a year, and I learned a few things. Backhand probably produces a perfect circle more often than forehand. Tossing high, above the plane of the body, is probably better than tossing on a level or tossing down. Most experienced casters do use their teeth to grip the net, as well as their two hands, but be warned that you can occasionally rip out a filling when monofilament catches on a something, or when a lead weight bangs into a tooth.

One-person shrimping here in the South is a matter of casting a monofilament net symmetrically-rigged with lead weights and round plastic guides for the filaments that rein in the weights. Monofilament nylon line is probably an improvement over the cotton netting that still is used, because thin nylon threads tend not to snag as easily as cotton ones on obstacles on the bottom (though they can be neatly severed by the sharp edge of an oyster shell). The object is to cast the net where you want it to go (that’s another whole question, one of aim) in a perfect O, as in a fly-cast for trout. Casting a perfect circle is harder to do, the larger the net, with a five foot diameter easier to put in a circle than a seven-foot diameter. Often the casting ends up in a crescent or a half-moon shape, which causes caster to curse or moan. The average Egyptian net-caster using the same technology 3500 years ago probably could fling a better O than we modern, technologically superior casters can. Monofilament line can have a tyranny of its own, catching on every little splinter as you carry it down the dock.

A perfect cast will drop to the bottom rapidly, surrounding all shrimp and fish inside. I have caught everything from shrimp and finger mullets on up to large rays and one notable gar, all in a cast net.

Shrimping is harder exercise than it looks to be. A Gullah woman with a soft lilt in her voice that sounded to me as if she had just arrived from Jamaica told me that she could no longer cast even a small seine because she had had metacarpal tunnel surgery. The motion swinging the lead weights out into an arc over the water several times in the course of a minute can work up a sweat quickly, and exhaust even a strong man after twenty minutes of casting. On the wharf at Beaufort, on the end near the bridge, at low tide you have to lean well out into space in order to pull up the net clear of the oyster shells that snag and can cut the filaments. That hurts your back. And at night it is hard to see what you are doing, leaning out over the oyster shells.

Another comrade of the wharf, a retired Navy marine engineer, told me and others in his audience that the shrimp flow in from the sea with the tide, around the point across the bay, in a huge S shape, following the current and the channel, bouncing off the underpinnings of the wharf in one place and then circling around the end of the wharf near the bridge. I have no idea whether he was right, but when I took my kayak against the outgoing tide, right next to the corner of the wharf, I ran into a strong current near where he said that channel was.

Shrimping at dusk, just as the lights come up on the water, was recommended to me by several of the regular shrimpers on the wharf, so I tried that, but my visit wasn’t timed according to the low tide, and I had only middling success.

One thing the shrimping gringo doesn’t know is that the squirmy translucent shrimp bouncing unpredictably on the tabby surface of the wharf can stab hell out of you. They do have a defense system, with spines sharp enough to penetrate a heavy-duty baggie. I’ve learned to pick them up from behind, so that they can’t stick a spine into my finger. One of the best tips I have received on how to handle them without being injured was from a kid from Charleston: he showed me how to pick them up by their antennae.

Shrimp are very good bouncers, among their other annoying habits, and they can flip their way out of the bucket just as they can flip clear out of the water when they are being chased by fish. It’s sad to return to a dock and see a shriveled dead shrimp who bounced out the night before.
Shrimping gringoes like myself have a hard time heading shrimp at first. The larger red sea shrimp, with their extended red antennae and their black inquisitive eyes on long stalks, seem to defy you not to take their heads off, but someone has to do it; otherwise, you bring home a bucket or a cooler of shrimp that just lay there and then die with their heads on. Actually now I just leave them in a shallow bucket of salt water until I am ready to boil them at home, rather than leave shrimp heads all over the dock or wharf.

But, after ripping their heads off, you have less sympathy for the no-longer-living organisms, and it may become easier to cook them. Friends who have lived here all their lives tell me there is calcium in the shells and that you should marinate the headless but un-peeled shrimp and then dredge them in flour and fry them in canola oil. This makes the shells soft, apparently, and it makes the tail end of the tail crunchy but not too sharp, so that you get very tasty, slightly crunchy shrimp to eat, and you get the calcium to boot. I am still not sure about eating the shrimp in their shells, though.

Shrimping at night on the wharf at Chambers Park, near the beautiful lights of the bridge, is worth doing for the company, for the good and bad advice, and for the shrimp. As one of the first people I talked to when I first visited Beaufort told me, "It takes a lazy man to starve, in Beaufort."