Coming soon via the Internet to your computer: 24/7 underwater views of St. John’s Lameshur Bay. A team of students from the Teens4Oceans program at Kent Denver School in Englewood, Colo., is at the V.I. Environmental Resource Station to install the camera.
“The entire rig has to deal with pressure, rusting and corrosion,” student Alex Wissmann, 15, of Denver said as he explained how the system works.
Wild Goose Engineering of Boulder, Colo., built the camera.
A team of nine students, as well as five teachers and faculty, arrived Tuesday to work on the project. They depart June 23.
They expect to have the webcam operational in a few days.
Wielding picks and shovels, they spent hours digging a trench and setting up the site. During a visit Thursday, they were installing the conduit pipes that run from the VIERS lab adjacent to Lameshur Bay to the nearby dock. The camera will sit under the dock.
The high-definition camera rotates 360 degrees and is extremely light-sensitive to take advantage of the natural light that comes through the water at Lameshur Bay.
“It sees 10 times the human eye,” said Trevor Mendelow, who teaches ninth- and 12th-grade science at Kent Denver.
While the work has gone smoothly so far, the team faces one challenge: They have to move the satellite dish from the VIERS base camp to the lab. However, VIERS manager Jamie Irving expects to get that done soon.
Teens4Oceans cut its teeth on an earlier project at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys. They set up the webcam to study Goliath grouper, also known as jewfish. They also worked in the Everglades and the Dry Tortugas.
“We have tens of thousands of people visiting our website,” Mendelow said.
The Lameshur project is funded through a $12,000 grant from Blue Ridge Charitable Trust principals Dennis Stattman and Sarah Ringer. It was funneled through the Friends of V.I. National Park, Friends Development Director Heather Ruhsam said. Teens4Oceans raised the additional $13,000 needed to pay for travel and other student expenses.
The project evolved after Kent Denver staff met V.I. Park Superintendent Mark Hardgrove. An invitation to work on St. John followed, and Mendelow said the team picked VIERS because webcam installation would be straightforward.
According to Mendelow, the students learned the technical aspects of webcam installation by doing it.
Teens4Oceans is a non-profit coalition of students, teachers and scientists who are working to increase stewardship of the ocean, Wissmann said, adding, “We’re trying to get other schools involved.”
Mendelow hopes that some of the schools will be in the territory.
To learn more about Teens4Oceans and to follow their blog about their work at VIERS, visit www.teensforoceans.org.
