— The Coast Guard calls their familiar small orange-rimmed interceptor boat the RB-S, but to the 18 kids in The Port of Port Arthur’s Camp Seaport who got to go for a spin in it at the U.S. Coast Guard station on Pleasure Island on Wednesday, it’s the speedboat.

The week-long camp exposes area youth to maritime career opportunities, from seafaring to marine surveying to an expansive variety of Coast Guard careers. Field trips take them to the Port of Port Arthur’s dock and terminals, a tour of Texas A&M’s Training Ship General Rudder and out on a Waterborne Education Exercise to Trinity Bay.

Wednesday campers were taking in the Coast Guard’s Small Boat Facility on Pleasure Island. They heard from officers and enlisted men about the wide variety of jobs available in that service and what one has to do to get into them.

Cameron Dorsey, a rising 9th-grader at Memorial High School, said his favorite part of camp so far was driving the speedboat through a “man overboard” drill. He explained the procedure, which involves sounding an alarm, throttling down and turning around.

Camp has made him look at the Coast Guard as a possible career, he said. He had been thinking he would like to be a doctor, possibly in a branch of the military.

“In the Coast Guard, I’d be saving lives,” he said. “And that’s why I wanted to be a doctor.”

Terrie Looney is a coastal and marine resource agent for Texas Sea Grant who’s been working with the campers this week. Today she’ll take them out for the day on the Floating Classroom aboard the educational vessel Moss Bluff, a 45-foot retired Coast Guard buoy tender, out of Annahuac. They’ll travel the Trinity River and bay, do environmental research, seine for shrimp, test water and learn about the area’s history.

“They’ll never look at a shrimp the same way again,” she said smiling.

“I like to take kids who know nothing (about maritime life) and show them their own community,” Looney said. “Most of these kids probably won’t end up in maritime careers, but they will be voters and consumers, and what they learn here will inform both.”

Most of the campers were interested in what they were learning but not necessarily sold on the career aspect. But some were.

Justin Rice, a rising 12th-grader at Nederland High School, said he grew up on the water and wants to build his life around it. He said he’s learned a lot at the camp and it’s re-enforces his goal to get into the Coast Guard Academy. His mother, Jackie Grayless, is a partnership in education coordinator for the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Unit on Turtle Creek Drive in Port Arthur.

Booker Daniels, who just graduated from Central High School in Beaumont, shares a love of the water. He’s a lifeguard at Sterling Pruitt Activity Center in Beaumont. He said the camp has made him think the Coast Guard is the way to go. He’s been accepted at Texas Southern University and plans to study maritime transportation. All he’s deciding now is whether to enter the service as an officer or start as an enlisted man.

Today will be a full day on the water. Tomorrow they learn about GPS orientation, etiquette and professionalism, make a trip to the International Seafarers Center in Port Arthur, and have a graduation ceremony.

They will leave knowing a lot more about an industry and a life that permeates Port Arthur and gives it its name.