The Albatross

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Welcome to the Educational Passages Podcast.
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Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization that seeks to connect people around the world to the ocean and each other through unique global experiences.
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I'm your host, Cassie Stymist.
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Welcome everybody to Season 4.
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Get ready to set sail on a brand new adventure as we launch our Imagine This series, where the magic of mini boats come alive through the voices and visions of those who make it all possible.
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In this series, each episode will paint a vivid picture of discovery, connection, and curiosity, not just tracking the voyages, but exploring the challenges and unexpected outcomes behind them.
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Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this.
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May 19th, 2023, Field Trip Day.
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You and your classmates travel to Newport, Rhode Island from Dudley, Massachusetts, an hour and a half on the bus.
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You're traveling to meet the Ocean Race boats and teams who have been sailing around the world because you've been taking part in their educational program.
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Your collective mission is to inspire others to take action to help the ocean.
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While waiting for the sailboats to arrive, you visit the Exploration Zone, a tent of fun and learning.
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You learn more about sailing and programs who are all dedicated to ocean education and exploration.
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You meet Wisdom the Albatross, who is the mascot for the ocean race.
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You learn that it is based on the world's oldest known wild bird who is over 70 years old and still successfully laying eggs and raising chicks.
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She's the mascot for the race because her long life and long journeys make her a powerful symbol of endurance, resilience, and the interconnected health of the world ocean.
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Towards the end of the exploration zone is the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.
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You learn about their research and meet some of their scientists.
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You see plankton under a microscope and touch a core sample from the ocean floor.
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You turn around and see a miniature sailboat, no longer than you are tall.
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You talk with the seventh grade students from nearby Thompson Middle School who have the TMS Sea Challenger mini boat on display.
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You learn that these students built the boat in their school in partnership with URIGSO, and that is something you can do too.
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They also added sensors so they could collect and contribute information about ocean science.
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Your teacher leaves their contact information and you all go watch the sailboats come in before going back home.
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And just one week later, your teacher is meeting with the director of educational passages to figure out how to bring the mini boat program to your school.
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Together, they write a grant to the MIT Sea Grant STREAM Program, and we're successful.
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January 2024, the Miniboat in a Box kit arrives with everything you and your crew need to put your own mini boat together.
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Twenty-six of you and your fellow sixth and seventh graders break into teams to do the work.
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Launch, cargo, deck, hull and keel, sail, media, and tech.
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You meet every single Friday afternoon for five months.
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Everyone has a role, a task, and a dream to send your little boat out into the world.
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You work with the elementary school to collect over 300 sail designs from the first and fourth graders.
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You narrow it down to four designs and paint them onto the sail.
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By March, you decide on a name, Anita.
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This will put the boat at the top of the list of all mini boats in the program, since it's listed alphabetically.
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You take over the display case and the main hallway to share the project with the rest of the school and your community.
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You all work to create and collect content for the cargo hold.
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Some of your ideas are stickers from local businesses, a Massachusetts flag, local recipes, and something from the town itself.
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Mia creates a hand crocheted albatross, Mini Wisdom, to honor the mission and mascot from the ocean race.
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The whole crew fills out a journal with notes from each crew member along with your predictions.
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You install sensors so your boat can collect information about the ocean, like air and water temperature.
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You also install a camera on the deck.
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You test it multiple times to make sure it is all good to go.
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You sand the boat and paint it.
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May comes around, one year after the ocean race field trip, and you're ready to seal and deploy your very own mini boat.
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All systems are a go.
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Your teacher arranges for another field trip.
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This time it's for you and your crewmates to bring your boat to the URI GSO docks and drop it off for the RV endeavor to take it out to sea.
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Your crewmates think it will go to Portugal, Morocco, France, England, or South America.
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One student thinks it will go closer, Nantucket, which is in Massachusetts.
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During the drop-off, you get to tour the ship and meet the crew.
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Lynn the Marine Tech and Lori the chief scientist tell you all about the research the Endeavor will be conducting while they're at sea during the cruise EN716.
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They are heading to the New England Shelf Break and plan to deploy a 48-foot-long acoustic array, as well as your mini boat.
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May 21, 2024, your miniboat was launched in the afternoon at 4:23 eastern, 145 miles south of Narragansett, Rhode Island.
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In an email, the crew said lots of fun was had here for the launch.
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Thank you for the opportunity.
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Within an hour of launch, we've received the first image from Linita at sea from her on deck camera.
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The data continues to come in hourly, each report showing a new set of information about the ocean and the conditions from where your mini boat is now sailing.
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How about that?
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You track the boat every day, but it's heading north.
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It crosses the continental shelf only two days after launch.
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Then it heads east, but only for a day.
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It makes a U-turn and goes west for a day and then continues north again.
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After only one week at sea, she does not end up in Portugal, Morocco, France, England, or South America, but she did almost in fact go to Nantucket, just as Aaron predicted.
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But instead, she went around the west of the Martha's Vineyard, as if waving to Rhode Island on the way by, before sailing right into Falmouth Harbor in Massachusetts.
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By the evening of may twenty eighth, she had landed.
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It was not the long Atlantic crossing voyage that we had thought, but still full of fun.
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So now what?
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Well, it turns out that a good friend of the Educational Passages program lives in Falmouth, coincidentally just down the road from the beach where Anita washed up.
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Jim finished his dinner and drove down the road to find Anita sitting nicely on the sand and brings her safely home.
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June arrives.
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You and your crew decide the adventure isn't over.
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You bring Anita back to URI GSO for a second voyage.
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Another field trip and tour of the ship takes place.
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You get to see the CTD Rosette that is going to collect water samples during the EN 717 cruise.
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The cruise is for Rhode Island teachers, and the Director of Educational Passages joins the crew to help launch your boat.
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June 8th, 2024.
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The ship is back out 140 miles away, about 20 miles west of the first mini boat launch site and south of the continental shelf break.
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It's World Ocean Day.
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Clear skies all day.
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The science team takes core samples of the ocean floor, and as they're towing for Plankton, they take a break to launch the boat and three special drifters too.
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After getting permission from the captain and with great support of all the crew members, the Anita is lowered down off the port side with line through the pad eyes on the deck.
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Slowly it goes closer and closer to the water.
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Once it splashed, it was released and the boat is on its own.
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She sails right off away from the ship.
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Moments later they carefully toss three maker buoy drifters as well to help study how the wind and currents will move things at sea.
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The mini boat heads east for three days, exactly what we had hoped to see.
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The drifters follow slowly behind, as expected as they don't have sails to move with the wind.
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But then Anita goes south and west, and ten days after launch, she sails within two miles from where she started.
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Then she goes west and over the shelf break, but not back to Massachusetts this time.
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This time she went all the way across the Gulf of Maine, heading northeast up to Nova Scotia.
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She stops about twenty miles south of the tip of the province and goes east.
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By June 28th, she heads north and comes within five miles of landing near Lockport the next day.
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Then she decides to keep going, now sailing northeast and parallel to the coastline for 40 miles.
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Starting on July 1st, she makes a big loop, south for 50 miles, then back up the same way.
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On July 6th, she crosses the exact same line she made on July 1st.
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And then just a few hours later, 28 days after she was launched from the RV Endeavor, and nearly 500 miles away now, the FV Mary Bernice, while fishing for halibut just five miles off the coast, spots the mini boat.
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Captain Andrew Fudge and crew pick the boat up and haul it onto the deck.
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It's the same size as the fish they were catching.
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He calls the number on the deck.
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Educational passages staff answer and ask him to bring the boat in so that it can find a school for you and your crew to meet.
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Even though it's summer, the news quickly reaches Massachusetts, and Nita's been rescued again.
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Captain Fudge keeps the boat at his house in Lockport, yes, Lockport, where the mini boat almost went to on its own before.
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And a new school year begins.
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Captain Fudge connects us to the local high school and brings the boat to them.
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In November, the students gather around the little boat to read the notes and study the trinkets from America, including the crocheted albatross.
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After a quiet school year that follows, you and your teacher talk about bringing Anita home so repairs could be made and a third voyage be attempted.
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The Lockport community are happy to help make this happen, and by the end of August 2025, your teacher was ready to drive up to Nova Scotia to get the boat.
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But we learn in early September that the RV Endeavor, yes, the ship that launched her twice before, was actually up that way on its final research expedition.
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The ship would be retiring a month later.
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It was currently in St.
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John's, Newfoundland, but had actually stopped in Halifax on the way up.
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Your teacher asked Andrea GSO, what are the chances that the Endeavor will port again in Halifax on its way back, and if so, be able to bring home the Anita?
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We can certainly make this happen.
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The ship arrives on September 15th and departs on the eighteenth, she said.
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But therein lied the challenge.
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How do we get the mini boat from Lockport to Halifax, a two-hour drive by car?
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Your teacher reached out to the Lockport community trying to see if anybody could bring the boat up, but no one was able to make the trip.
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The clock was counting down and the ship was making its way towards Halifax, but no one was available.
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Until someone at Educational Passages remembered that there are friends who repaired and relaunched the Warrior, which is another mini boat from Massachusetts that went to Halifax a few years ago.
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They sent an email on September 10th to ask in the off chance that they had any contacts down in Logport.
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Well, just four hours later, Graham's ask through the Maritime Museum community came through, and he had found someone to drive the boat north.
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The boat was picked up at the school and delivered to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, where Alice, the chief scientist on this cruise, was to help get it on board.
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Graham confirmed this on September 15th by email.
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It looks like everything is set for Anita's return.
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The Endeavor returns to Halifax for a quick stopover, ending the very last expedition it will have EN seven three six.
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DMS Anita is loaded on board, and the crew make their bittersweet return to the docks in Rhode Island one last time on September 20th.
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A crowd is gathered, including staff from educational passages, to welcome the ship and crew back home one last time.
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The flags are raised, the cannons salute, and sea shanties ring out.
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The community comes together to celebrate the last 49 years of carrying thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians, students, and teachers to sea on 736 cruises.
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As you see the ship approaching, you smile because you know that your mini boat, the one that started as a kit of parts over two and a half years before, and has become the adventurous explorer DMS Anaita is safely on board, heading back to where both of its at-sea journeys started.
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While the statistics of these voyages are as miniature in size as the boat itself, they are still quite noteworthy.
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Thirty-five total days at sea, 1,200 kilometers traveled, and 995 data reports collected.
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Another field trip is planned on October 1st for you and a few of your classmates.
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As eighth graders now, you are reunited with your mini boat as it disembarks a ship and you are standing on the docks once again.
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It almost feels like the passing of a torch of some kind to you and your crewmates to carry on ocean exploration and discovery.
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You find the cargo hold empty, other than the tracking technology, but that just means it's ready to be filled once again for new finders.
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You reflect on the process and talk about the gifts that were left with the Brit Lockport crew.
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You remember the crocheted albatross and how this journey all began.
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You remember the ocean race, wisdom the mascot, all the learning along the way, the people you have met, and the family you have brought together.
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As you take a group photo standing in front of the RV Endeavor, the same ship that carried your mini boat into the Atlantic twice, the same ship that has explored a million miles of ocean.
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You recall that the crew once said that the Endeavour is also called the Albatros, because it was the oldest and longest operating research vessel in the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System Fleet.
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As you tour the campus afterwards, you think of becoming an ocean scientist, a marine technician, a biologist, jobs you never even knew existed a few years ago.
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Who would have thought that a field trip to the ocean race would turn into all of this?
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So now it's time to spread your wings and fly, to soar as far as you want to go.
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As the endeavor stays home to retire, the open ocean awaits you.
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Endless possibilities.
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On the bus ride home, you and the crew decide together.
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Let's keep going.
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Let's set Anita's wings to the wind once again and see how long and far she can go to inspire others.
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Y
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ou have been listening to the Educational Passages Podcast.
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Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization.
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Please consider making a donation to help us continue our work bringing people together to learn more about the ocean.
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To donate, head over to educationalpassages.org slash support.
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If you're enjoying this program, please consider subscribing to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or from wherever you download your podcasts.
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Thanks for listening to the