The hands-on Sea Perch experience is a gateway to further study and careers in robotics, engineering, marine sciences and more.

Created by the MIT Sea Grant College Program in 2003, The Sea Perch Program trains educators across the United States and around the world to build the Sea Perch, simple, remotely operated underwater vehicle, or ROV, made from PVC pipe and other inexpensive, easily available materials.

Teachers then work with students to build their own Sea Perches and deploy them on research missions in nearby bodies of water.

Students around the world are using their Sea Perches to collect and enter water quality data into the Sea Perch Data Bank, an international water quality database. Data collected by Sea Perch users is automatically integrated into state of the art GIS maps and comparative graphs. Students and teachers can use any of these graphs in their classroom and can customize the data for the subject or concept they are working on. Scientists around the world can tap into the database to use the data in their research.

On the Website, teachers will find: dates for upcoming training workshops; discussion of costs and funding; names of the schools involved; a Sea Perch teacher chat site; curriculum, and brief videos with helpful hints about soldering and other activities. Check out, as well the other community activities of the MIT Sea Grant program, such as the Charles River cleanup and the eelgrass project.

Filed under: K-12 Outreach Programs, Web Resources

Tags: Building robots, Robotics, Underwater Robot, Web Resources