♪ >> so we're eight, nine years old, really upset about this, and laurette put the idea on the tableng an endangered species ourselves. >> that's when we got involved with the adopt-a-species program; they gave us three species to choose from -- a trout, a salmon, or the california freshwater shrimp. >> and it wasn't the cutest or, you know, probably most likely that a fourth grader would choose. it wasn't like a koala bear. >> they left that day pretty dejected saying, "oh, great. we're going to work on a shrimp." and nobody was very excited about it. >> but when we thought about it a little more, we thought that probably the species that were in most need were those that weren't so cute and cuddly, weren't so well known, things that people didn't think about on a daily basis. >> our motto was "the world is a poorer place for the -- for a loss of a species." and the shrimp were very representative of ourselves -- little fourth graders who -- and thinking we couldn't affect people, and we did. >> they went through the scientific papers very slowly, as you can imagine, and learned abo