A team of Highlands Intermediate and Pearl City High School students is looking forward to exploring simulated shipwrecks and sinkholes in a setting that features one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes as a backdrop.
This month the students will travel to Michigan’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve on Lake Huron to represent Hawaii in an international competition involving subsurface scrambles — all while keeping their feet on dry land.
The team, dubbed Kaimana Enterprises, and other competitors will navigate a course devised by the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center — based on Lake Huron’s submerged topography — with remotely operated vehicles in swimming pools situated near Thunder Bay.
"The kids are going to be ready, and I believe that they will represent Hawaii well," said Kathy Lin, a science teacher at Highlands who oversees the team, part of a science club at the school.
Student teams preparing to take part in the MATE Center’s 13th annual international ROV competition, slated to start June 26, are top finishers from 17 regional ROV contests held across the United States as well as in Canada, Hong Kong and Scotland.
The MATE Center, a national partnership of organizations focused on improving marine technical education and generating interest in related careers, asks competing teams to form ROV-centered companies to give them a sense of workplace and teamwork scenarios, said Jill Zande, MATE’s competition coordinator.
"We really want students to have an understanding of the breadth of business operations and really give them a sense of how their role contributes to the team as a whole," Zande said.
Kaimana Enterprises began taking shape about three months ago when 15 students got together during spring break. Initially they formed two companies: Kaimana Enterprises and Kai Koa Enterprises.
The two ROV companies merged into a single team after taking top honors at a state regional competition last month on Hawaii island. Preparations for that event included building an underwater ROV that could perform competition tasks, writing a technical report and creating a poster display and engineering presentation.
This year’s MATE competition tasks are tied to Thunder Bay’s shipwreck status. Thanks to a treacherous stretch of water in the area — complete with unpredictable weather, fog banks and sudden gales — the marine sanctuary houses more than 50 shipwrecks. The lake’s cold fresh water keeps some aging wrecks nearly unchanged.
Student teams will face off poolside on a course in which they’ll use ROVs to identify a model shipwreck site, study a sinkhole and remove trash from the shipwreck and surrounding area.
Previous MATE competition themes include the use of remotely operated vehicles to help clean up the 2011 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the use of underwater robots to probe the Loihi seamount. About 22 miles off Hawaii island’s coast, Loihi — the youngest of Hawaii’s volcanoes — rises to within about 3,000 feet of the surface.
Lin said during the final few months of the 2013-14 school year, her students dedicated between 20 and 30 hours a week to prepare for the MATE competition, often meeting after school days and on weekends. To practice underwater maneuvers, they relied on a pool owned by a student’s family friend because neither Pearl City High nor Highlands Intermediate has one.
"That’s the most difficult part of this competition … the fact that we don’t have a pool at our school," Lin said. Transporting students and supplies to the pool as well as packing and unpacking robotics gear can be an "all-day event," she said.
The ROVs used for MATE events are constructed from scratch and entirely by the students, said Lin, who has been involved with the robotics competition for five years. Parents and other volunteers can serve as mentors.
Mentor Joe Adcock, an electrical engineer, helped team members with soldering basics and other robotics-related skills.
"We have to teach them some of the techniques, and once they learn them they apply them. … We teach them to solder, and then they have to solder the actual things on the robot."
The same applies to properly cutting plastic tubing and other construction details.
"I think it’s a very valuable experience for them, learning and being able to compete in an international competition," Adcock said.
After the regional competition, the merged team completely rebuilt an ROV for the international competition, combining the ideas that worked well for the original Kaimana and Kai Koa enterprises.
"Because we did two completely different things, now we have to find like a middle ground and decide what we want to do," said ninth-grader Alex Yamada, who had been a Kai Koa member.
The new ROV includes six 1,000-gallon bilge pump motors, seven cameras, three claws, a V-hook, two tape measures and an additional motor.
