Thanks to a partnership with California Maritime Academy, students in Andrea Jenest’s oceanography class at Benicia High School not only have built underwater, remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs. The students also got to see how well their watercraft performed in challenging assignments.

The collaboration between the Vallejo- based maritime academy and the high school is part of the Office of Naval Research Sea Perch Build project, said David Buckley, Cal Maritime cadet.

The students’ 14 remotely operated vehicles (ROV) work much like submarines, Buckley said. The intent of the project was to give the students a hands-on learning experience that would encourage their interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers.

“Sea Perch is a great way to combine the many aspects of our oceanography class into a hands-on experiment where we could actively build and drive an ROV,” said BHS student Amanda Radtke, a member of the oceanography class.

The students received help from the academy’s Society of Naval Architects and Maritime Engineers, who mentored the students as they constructed their watercraft.

“I can’t tell you how important they were,” Jenest said of Cal Maritime. “It would not have happened without them!”

Earlier this month, 37 of the 56 oceanography class members had had a chance to test their underwater vehicles at Cal Maritime’s pool at the Vallejo campus.

“In a lighthearted competition, students participated in an ROV obstacle course, a simulated oil spill and underwater exploration exercises,” Buckley said.

Jenest said it also was a chance for students to have an educational experience in a different place.

“It was great to be out of the classroom environment,” she said. “It was (a) liberating feeling, like the students had taken control of their own projects, and I was there just to help if they needed — no classroom management required!”

After watching their ROVs operate in the academy’s pool, the students later were taken by their mentors on tours of the college’s training ship Golden Bear. They also saw an engineering presentation.

Jenest has been teaching oceanography to Benicia High juniors and seniors for about eight years.

Last year was the first time students tried making the underwater vessels, she said.

It was a modest start, begun when Cal Maritime sought the students’ participation in the Sea Perch program. Participants in the pilot program were some members of the school’s sailing club, advised by Joan Wildasin, and some of Jenest’s oceanography class students.

“There was no curriculum integration,” she said. “We did a ‘competition’ at the pool, but it wasn’t as elaborate, and the students didn’t get to participate in a college tour or final presentation from the cadets.”

But this year, the program and event were bigger and better, she said.

Cal Maritime and its cadets “are a great group, and they worked really hard to make this possible,” Jenest said. “They did a ton of work, and really brought the rest of the Cal Maritime college on board with this event.”

She said students learned to use a manual as a construction guide, and were able to apply in real life their classroom lessons in the principles of buoyancy, team building and troubleshooting.

“They had to deal with whatever went wrong during the construction process,” Jenest said.

“It’s wonderful to see students engaging with curriculum that asks them to actually use their own two hands to build something, and then troubleshoot as they do it.

“For some students, it was the first time they had ever used power tools, while others who struggle with a traditional project really got the opportunity to shine in this more hands-on environment,” she said.

“What was exciting for me was to hear them use their science and apply it to something they were building, or to hear them get excited when they saw an ROV in the curriculum — it gave them a way to relate,” she said.

Jenest said the students did well navigating their vessels through obstacles that were closer to the edge of the pool.

But the vehicles had long tethers, and students soon discovered the challenges of navigating the little “submarines” through small hoops. They met those challenges through teamwork, Jenest said.

“The students had to work together, with one student watching the ROV while the other took directions on where to have the ROV travel,” she said.

Students also did well with a simulated oil spill scenario. For this experiment, the students had to maneuver their ROVs to pick up pingpong balls that represented the oil. Then they were told to put the balls into a trap.

The tricky part of that test was capping the “leaky pipe” at the bottom of the pool, Jenest said.

Fortunately, it was a staged event, not a real emergency, she said, adding that she has gained an appreciation for the difficulty of capping a real oil spill.

“I can’t imagine how hard it would have been for the Deep Horizon oil platform, if we were struggling at the bottom of a pool!” Jenest said.

The ROVs and their operators also had an audience this year. Employees of RIX Industries and Benicia Unified School District administrators were poolside to watch the vessels’ performance, Buckley said.

Jenest said she looks forward to future ROV-building and -operating projects at Benicia High School. She already has the assurance of Cal Maritime and RIX that next year’s program will be possible, and the program has a sponsor for 2015.

RIX is a Benicia company that has hired several Benicia High graduates in the past, and Dana Otterson, of the company’s Strategic Resource Development, said RIX will fund the innovative project during the next academic year, an offer Jenest called “incredibly generous.”

RIX also has ties to the Navy, having contributed to naval design architecture and maritime science since the early 1900s, Otterson said.

The company has more than 135 years of experience in oil-free gas compression, and makes compressors, nitrogen generators and liquid oxygen plants for the U.S. Navy. It recently supplied products for the Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the first ship in the newest class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers that was christened at Newport News, Virginia, on Nov. 9.

“RIX Industries is proud to support Benicia High School with an exciting project like Sea Perch,” Otterson said. “As an innovative engineering and compressor company, it is wonderful for us at RIX to see the interest in new engineering projects by our community youth.”