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High school students who named NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer are congratulated from sea by explorer Robert Ballard

By Fred Gorell

Woodstock High winiing student team holds Okeanos Explorer banner in fron of former Navy ship Capable

The team from Woodstock High holds an "Okeanos Explorer" banner in front of the former Navy ship USNS Capable. The students won a nationwide contest to rename the ship.

When a team of students at Woodstock High School in Illinois learned they had won a nationwide contest to name NOAA's new ship for ocean exploration, they were delighted but surprised. "I never won anything," said one student. What followed, led their teacher/coach to exclaim, "This is something these students will remember for a lifetime."

What followed, was considerable. First, NOAA leadership visited the school to congratulate the student team. Retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator; and Rear Admiral Samuel P. De Bow, Jr., NOAA Director, NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps, and Director, NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, spoke at a school assembly. It was more brass than the school had ever seen before. Science teacher Marianne Jahnke led the winning team of five students. "It was fantastic that they would visit us," she said.

The students submitted the name Okeanos Explorer, with Okeanos the ancient Greek word for ocean. That name, along with an associated education project they created and demonstrated, made them winners in a field of more than 400 contest submissions.

Students try out the controls while the Capable is dockside

Woodstock High students try out the controls on the bridge of the former Navy ship Capable while the ship is tied fast to the pier at NOAA's Marine Operations Center Pacific, awaiting movement to a shipyard for conversion

Students raised their high school flag and the NOAA flag on the former Capable

Students raised two flags on the former Capable. A NOAA flag will be part of a presentation piece for display in the school while a Woodstock school flag will be part of a presentation piece to be displayed on the ship.

Students take part in a press conference the day after their ship visit

The day after students visited the ship they named, they were part of a press conference at the University of Washington. On the screen over their heads is famed explorer Bob Ballard, who congratulated the team from his location at sea, on NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, in the mid-Atlantic over the "Lost City" site.

Lautenbacher spoke about a then upcoming mission to "Lost City," that would demonstrate "telepresence," a satellite to high-speed Internet pathway that would allow research vessels at sea to beam live data and images to pods of scientists ashore, and to anyone with Internet access, such as in classrooms at Woodstock and other schools. He told the students that "telepresence" would be built in to the ship they named.

At the time, the winning students did not know they would soon experience "telepresence" first hand, and be part of a key "Lost City" event. With the support of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, the student team and their teacher/coach visited the former Navy ship Capable pierside at NOAA's Marine Operation Center Pacific in Seattle where Larry Mordock guided them on a tour of the Center and the ship they named. A NOAA Video team followed the Woodstock students to create video b-roll made available to Chicago area television stations. The following day, the students were a few miles away at the University of Washington as part of a press conference that demonstrated telepresence during the "Lost City" ocean expedition.

From NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown in the mid-Atlantic ocean, famed explorer Dr. Robert Ballard communicated with University of Washington's Dr. Debbie Kelley, who was in a specially designed command center. She and other scientists connected in real time to Ballard, and to images from the seafloor using high-speed Internet and satellites. “With teams ashore at the University of Rhode Island and University of Washington, more intellectual capital can be applied to the mission,” said Ballard. In the past, missions have been limited by ship-to-shore communications capacity, the finite number of berthing spaces on research vessels and by competing obligations which sometimes precluded top scientists from going to sea.

Additionally, NOAA and the University of New Hampshire supported the mission operating their own science command center in the Joint Hydrographic Center. The Center staffed the cruise on a round the clock basis using telepresence to provide the ship near real-time processing ashore of multibeam seafloor mapping data acquired by the ship, and to support navigation visualization for operation of underwater robots.

At the University of Washington's science command center, Woodstock students not only saw telepresence in action, they were part of it. "Really great," said one student after her turn at a one-on one conversation with Ballard after Ballard addressed the entire team and congratulated them for naming NOAA's new ship.

"I hope the students from Woodstock High School who came up with the Okeanos name in a nationwide contest, might one day sail on the vessel, " said Ballard. "Perhaps one of them will be a scientist or operator of deep-sea robots, or a teacher whose class takes advantage of the educational activities that bring the excitement of expeditions such as this into the classroom."

NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration was created to investigate the oceans for the purpose of discovery and the advancement of knowledge. The program signaled a turning point for the nation's ocean exploration efforts and it represents a bold and innovative approach. It infuses teams of multidisciplinary scientist-explorers with a spirit of discovery, then equips them with the latest exploration tools.

Missions of the Office of Ocean Exploration are:

Mapping and characterizing the physical, biological, chemical and archaeological aspects of the ocean
Developing a more thorough understanding of ocean dynamics and interactions at new levels
Developing new sensors and systems to regain U.S. leadership in ocean technology
Reaching out to the public to communicate how and why unlocking the secrets of the ocean will benefit current and future generations.

The office dedicates 10 percent of its annual budget to various outreach and education activities and is committed to working toward improving science literacy and developing the next generation of ocean explorers, scientists and educators.

[8/22/05]

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