A group of New England NOAA Teacher at Sea Alumni had the opportunity to work with a NOAA Northeast Fisheries physical oceanographer, Jim Manning, on May 19, 2012 during a two-day professional development workshop. Alumni learned about shallow ocean currents and how drifter buoys are constructed to track these current patterns. They then were put to work building four of their own drifters.

The drifters were deployed on May 31, 2012 with the help of NOAA scientist, Heather Haas from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) Protected Species Branch, on a sea turtle research trip.

Read more about drifters here.