Boys and Girls Club goes on shipwreck discovery with underwater bots

ALPENA, Mich. — A Huron Pines AmeriCorps service member has been working with the Boys and Girls Club of Alpena. She wants to spark interest in creating their own underwater robot team.

The kids from the Boys and Girls Club are pretending to compete in a regional remotely operated vehicle competition all week long. In this exercise, the kids are locating a makeshift shipwreck inside of NOAA’s indoor tank. They’ll focus on their findings at the end of the week.

AmeriCorps service member Kellie Wasikowski says you don’t have to be a club member in order to learn how to control an ROV.

“We do have our one–on–one NOAA drop-in days,” said Wasikowski. “This year we have a lot more additions to them because we’re doing little pilot logs. They’re a bunch of different tests that kids can come visit. They can spend a couple hours here and finish the whole log in one day or visit the next couple Wednesdays.”