Two large pet kennels sit on the bow of Chris Crolley’s pontoon boat-aptly named the Pelican-as it chugs slowly toward the mouth of Shem Creek into the Charleston, South Carolina harbor. Holes in the crates’ plastic reveal the curve of feathered heads and the dramatic plunging lines of impossibly long bills. The air intermittently fills with a soft shrieking that sounds vaguely prehistoric. “Today is a celebration,” says Crolley, the founder of Coastal Expeditions canoe and kayak tour agency. He’s a naturalist and conservationist who skews philosophical-especially at times like these, when his life’s work protecting this area’s coastal habitat converges in the form of two rehabbed eastern brown pelicans ready for release.