September 17, 2004 — When 34 teams of students from across the United States and Canada designed, built and piloted their competitive remotely operated vehicles, they were out to score big in simulated challenges at the bottom of a swimming pool during the NOAA-supported third Annual National Student ROV Competition, held this summer at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

What the students found were problems — not simulated problems, but real ones that mirrored recent challenges faced on NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown. For students and NOAA employees alike, overcoming those problems provided real lessons in teamwork and technology, and in life.

Organized by the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center and the Marine Technology Society’s ROV Committee, the event challenged participants to a series of realistic science and exploration tasks set on the simulated “Mystery Reef” and patterned after actual underwater missions coordinated by the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and the NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program.

“We’re always looking for the best and the brightest, and you can find them here,” said Bryce Merrill, the competition’s chief judge and ROV systems recruiting manager for offshore industry company, Oceaneering International.

This year’s event gave students an opportunity to learn more about NOAA's 13 national marine sanctuaries after the MATE Center and the ROV Committee teamed up with the NOAA NMSP to create a competition theme based on real science and underwater exploration missions that is the same kind of work and technology used to explore and monitor sanctuaries to conserve, protect and enhance their biodiversity, ecological integrity and cultural legacy (i.e., recovering the USS Monitor's revolving gun turret and cannons and confirming and documenting the location of the Portland in the NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary). Indeed, education advisors representing many of the National Marine Sanctuaries were at the ROV competition to lend helping hands.

NOAA NMSP Director Dan Basta, said, “We’re proud to be associated with the MATE competition. Here’s a program that inspires young people to think individually and to work in teams to meet some very, very difficult challenges — the same difficult challenges we face in sanctuary operations.”

NOAA’s Craig McLean agrees. “These are kids who decided put down their computer game joy sticks, baseballs or basketballs to participate in this unique contest. A lot of those kids didn’t know what ROVs were before they heard about the contest. But they came both from poor and affluent schools, and from schools where some knew little about the ocean. The hearts in those kids, the smiles on their faces and the sweat on their brows when something went wrong, were so ‘real-world’ that I likened it to our experience during NOAA’s recent ‘Return to Titanic’ mission, during which I served as Ocean Exploration program director.

“On that mission, our ROV had a technical failure — we had to fix it and fast. People were moving across the deck of NOAA ship Ron Brown to find the materials and parts needed. Many of the fixes I saw at the ROV competition were not pretty, as ours wasn’t on the deck of the Ron Brown, but in both places, those fixes got the job done.”

One team at the competition saw their ROV fail at 2 a.m. — not an uncommon time for a failure in the real world. The team kept trying to fix the problem on their own, even after another team that had finished their competition, started to dismantle their motors and other apparatus and offered them to the team in trouble. When false pride kept them from accepting the equipment, one of the judges who had overheard the exchange said, “I think you should use what they are offering — there’s nothing in the rules against it.” Suddenly screw drivers and duct tape came out as the new equipment was installed on the broken ROV.

“Two weeks earlier we were doing the same on the deck of the Ron Brown,” said McLean, sharing his comparison with all the competitors at the ROV awards ceremony. “We had a problem with the inch-thick ROV tether — a wire with a fiber optic cable inside it and a huge volume of electricity that passes through it. At a point where the cable had been pushed back and forth during underwater operations, the cable weakened and shorted out. It smoked on deck during a pre-dive power-up test. We knew how to fix it, but the question was how to fix without it breaking again.”

At the MATE competition, the team that borrowed parts and reengineered their ROV, saw it perform fabulously. On the Ron Brown, the ROV team was one that had been assembled by Robert Ballard’s Institute for Exploration, and they were the best in the business. But when they asked for help, the marine engineers of the Ron Brown’s crew, normally assigned to operate the ship’s engines and machinery, were up to the task. “The Ron Brown’s engineers found a hose to arrest the tether’s flexibility at its weak point and as they blended into the ROV team, the Institute for Exploration guys saw what skills they had to offer and said, ‘don’t leave.’” The fix didn’t look pretty — sequential layers of hydraulic tubing to apply both strength and flexibility. It was a very basic fix applied to space age fiber optic umbilical system, but it worked.

On the Ron Brown, after the ROV was fixed, the team of engineers watched the tether unreel as the ROV sped toward Titanic 12,500 feet below. McLean reminded the ship’s engineers that it was an interesting place to be at that time — at the spot where all 100 engineers on the Titanic lost their lives while trying to keep the lights on to help rescue ships find Titanic. “It was probably one of the most, if not the most, noble of gestures made by engineers who could have gotten out and tried to swim for it, but they didn’t — they chose to remain on duty deep in the belly of the ship.”

High school, home school, community college and university teams from Hawaii to Canada and Cape Cod competed in MATE’s advanced “Explorer” class or the equally challenging, but less technically complex “Ranger” class. In addition to overall ratings, there were team awards for the least amount of money spent on a vehicle that performed well, for overcoming hardships with determination and resolve, for most safety conscious, and for innovation and originality. One team had nearly 100 pages of engineering analysis on the design and performance of their ROV. “It was as detailed as anything I’ve seen in industry,” said a judge.

As another team moved its ROV up from the bottom, the vehicle caught an edge on the simulated reef and the whole thing was lifted up toward the surface. When the team saw what was happening, they maneuvered the reef back down, but it landed on top of an object they were supposed to retrieve, but now could not. The team did well on points but later challenged competition officials saying they could have scored higher if the device under the reef was in play. After their request for a point increase failed, a father of one team member said it was a great learning experience. “They learned to prepare their case, to present it to an authoritative body and to live with the decision. It was a lesson in life.”

The first-place teams were Carl Hayden High School from Phoenix, Ariz., in the Explorer class, and Cambridge Rindge & Latin School from Cambridge, Mass., in the Ranger class, but it was generally agreed that every participant came away from the event with a greater appreciation for teamwork, focused effort and accomplishment. One student remarked, “This competition is the best thing that’s ever happened in my life.”

“Experience is the real trophy they came away with,” said McLean. “Those are the kids who will take my job, and they are starting earlier than me.”

Relevant Web Sites
"RETURN TO TITANIC" MEETS SCIENCE OBJECTIVES, REMINDS ALL THAT WRECK SITE IS HALLOWED GROUND Expedition Ends Just Prior to U.S. Signing of Titanic Agreement

NOAA, NAVY, THE MARINERS' MUSEUM BEGIN EFFORTS TO RAISE
USS MONITOR'S TURRET

NOAA’S OCEAN EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES

NOAA EXPLORES DEPTHS OF ITS FIVE WEST COAST MARINE SANCTUARIES ON 60-DAY SANCTUARY QUEST 2002

NOAA TRACKS EXPLORATION OF REMARKABLE DEEP-SEA MOUNTAIN

SUSTAINABLE SEAS EXPEDITION KICKS OFF 10TH MISSION IN HAWAII

Media Contact:
Fred Gorell, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, (301)713-9444 x181