Over the last four years, 187 Boy Scouts from as far away as Georgia and South Carolina have worked toward their merit badges in Oceanography by participating in an annual event hosted by NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanography Products and Services (CO-OPS) Field Operations Division, located in Chesapeake, Virginia.

This year, 44 boys aged 11 to 17 built makeshift buoys and learned what made them float (or not). The scouts were divided into five groups and rotated through five work stations where, in addition to the physics of buoyancy, they learned about shipwrecks, hydrography, Chesapeake Bay ecology, and ocean acidification.

Continue reading →

...