When every other preschool-aged boy was running around after a soccer ball, watching cartoons or “stabbing each other with lightsabers,” Justin Cucchi was digging up worms, watching animal planet or collecting bugs. Justin’s childhood hero, unlike many of his peers, was not Superman or any other idolized cartoon character, but Steve Irwin, “the crocodile hunter” from Animal Planet.

Paige Cucchi remembers her son putting on animals shows, instead of staging battles between toy soldiers.

“He was 4 years old and he would tell you, ‘This is a penguin, and it lives in Antarctica and it eats this,’” Paige Cucchi said. “And he would do this for hours.”

Justin Cucchi, a sophomore in the Biomedical and Engineering Academy, has always had a passion for animals, their habitats and their conservation. Justin’s first community service experience involving animals was with a neighborhood organization, L.abrador Friends of the South. During the summer before Justin began high school. He started the Volunteen program at Zoo Atlanta, which provides community service opportunities for highly motivated and dedicated teens. As a second year Volunteen, Justin and his fellow Volunteens spend most of their time interacting with guests or cleaning up the animal enclosures.

“I do interpretation,” Justin said. “I stand out in front of an exhibit and answer guest questions and spit out facts.”

After two years of “Volunteening,” participants in the program can “specialize” their volunteer work to a specific scientific class or subclass. Justin will meet this requirement this upcoming summer. He hopes to hopes to specialize in birds or small mammals.

In addition to Justin’s work at Zoo Atlanta, Justin is the president of Grady’s Earth Club. The Earth Club works to educate students about urban agriculture and earth conservation. The club, sponsored by Korri Ellis, also plans a number of earth-related community service projects, such as river and nature preserve cleanups.

Justin is also a leading member of Grady’s swim team and swims with an additional recreational swim team, Dynamo, located out of Chamblee.

During his middle school years at Inman, Justin’s interests in animal protection, earth conservation and water collided when he first learned about marine biology. Marine biology, or the study of animals, plants and other life forms that live in the ocean, is not a fairly common interest for a 15-year-old boy. And yet, for Justin, it’s his passion.

“When I was little, I always had pets…fish, chickens,  dogs, hermit crabs, birds, anything that you can name we’ve probably had it,” Justin said. “And I thought, ‘well I really like the water because I swim and I love being out on the ocean.’ And then I love seeing dolphins and going snorkeling [when my family travels], and so I thought I’d rather be out [studying biology]  in the water every day than be on land.”

Due to Grady’s limited marine biology-related classes, Justin has needed to find programs to fulfill his interests on his own. Through his research, and with the help of his mother, Justin found a program that quenched his thirst for marine science last school year.

The Oceans for Life program, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a two-and-a-half week program that takes 15 students from the United States and 15 students from countries in the Middle East to study marine conservation and how the ocean connects the world. Justin roomed with a fellow swimmer from Saudi Arabia named Ahmed Tashkandi. ll 30 students frequently video chat on Google Plus to stay in touch.

Although the entire program was enlightening and exciting for Justin, he especially enjoyed an expedition to Santa Cruz Island. The four day stay was mostly to give the students are new learning environment, but it was also a beautiful place to bond.

“It was so pretty and you felt so untouched there,” Justin said. “You can’t really camp there unless you’re a researcher, so it was really cool to have all my friends there and spend time with them on this secluded island when you’re all alone having fun.”

After the program was finished and Justin returned to Atlanta, he began working on his required post-program action project. For Justin’s project, he used videos he made while attending Oceans for Life to inform his fellow Earth Club members, students from Ms. Relja’s class and other science classes at Grady about earth and marine conservation. Justin also presented his powerpoint and videos to his sister’s classmates at Springdale Park. The teachers at Springdale Park were so impressed by his presentation that Justin was asked to return sometime this spring to present to even more classes.

Paige Cucchi believes this to be one of the biggest benefits to her son’s experience at Oceans for Life.

“I’m really proud of him for seeking out those opportunities,” Paige Cucchi said. “And for having the courage to get involved in something that he wasn’t really maybe comfortable or familiar with. I think he’s really made a difference and educated a lot of people and created a lot of awareness in our community about ocean conservation.”

Because of the extent of Justin’s heightened passion about marine biology, Justin has applied to a second program through the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States. If Justin is accepted to the full program, he will spend three weeks this coming summer in Greenland with students from the United States, Denmark and Greenland.

After summers in high school spent around the world learning more about marine biology and earth conservation, Justin knows he wants to study marine biology in college, hopefully somewhere in California. After college, he’ll begin treading the unchartered waters of working in the marine biology field. The only thing Justin is certain about; he doesn’t want to spend his days sitting in an office.