The Cape Cod Sea Turtle Project

Season 4 of the Educational Passages Podcast continues with our “Imagine This” series — where the stories behind our miniboats reveal something even deeper than ocean currents and GPS tracks.

Each episode invites you to step into a moment of possibility — to feel the anticipation, the uncertainty, and the extraordinary connections that unfold when students send something small into a very big ocean.

Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this:

The Cape Cod Sea Turtle Project, where students, scientists, and community partners work together to understand how ocean currents impact cold-stunned sea turtles. Through the use of student-built miniboats and drifters, classrooms become part of real-world research—tracking movement, collecting data, and uncovering patterns in the ocean. This is a story of hands-on learning, collaboration, and discovery, showing how understanding the movement of water can help protect marine life and power the blue economy. 

Sources & More Info:

• Educational Passages Project: https://educationalpassages.org/capecodseaturtleproject/ 
• Mass Audubon Sea Turtle Project: https://www.massaudubon.org/places-to-explore/wildlife-sanctuaries/wellfleet-bay/projects/sea-turtles
• Studentdrifters.org 
• Page FM, Manning J, Howard L, Healey R, Karraker NE. 2023. Developing bottom drifters to better understand the stranding locations of cold-stunned sea turtles in Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts. PeerJ 11:e15866 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15866). 
• Cold Stunned Sea Turtles: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/cold-snaps-and-stunned-sea-turtles 
• More on Jim Manning's work: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/low-cost-technology-helps-connect-fishermen-and-students-science 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization that seeks to connect people around the world to the ocean and each other through unique global experiences. I'm your host, Cassie Stymist.

Cold-Stunned Sea Turtles On Cape Cod

Mini Boats And Drifters Explained

Early Deployments And First Sensor Boat

Student Upgrades And Unexpected Landings

New Designs And A Drifter Escapes

Fleet Launch Results And Whale Food Clue

Cape To Cabo Verde Global Connection

Blue Economy Impacts And Support Needed

Donate And Subscribe

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Welcome everybody to Season 4. 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. 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. Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this. It's late fall on Cape Cod. The wind is shifting. The water is getting colder. And out in the bay, sea turtles are becoming cold stunned. Wait, did you even know they were here? There are actually four species of sea turtles that come here during the summer. All are threatened or endangered. They come here to eat, but when water temperatures drop below fifty five degrees Fahrenheit, they get too cold to move, so they drift, carried by currents they can't control. They're unable to swim out of the bay and back home to warmer water. So they wash up on the beaches where volunteers are walking, scanning the shoreline, hoping to find them in time to save them. Mass Audubon volunteers have been patrolling these beaches since 1979, day and night during the stranding season. Most of the turtles are juvenile campsridlies, the smallest and rarest. You are sitting in a classroom and learning about this, but instead of just being told about it, the teacher helps you see it, not on a PowerPoint slide, but in the water. That's where the mini boats and drifters come in. The Cape Cod Sea Turtle Project. Small, drifters about the same size as a sea turtle, and six foot long uncrewed sailboats, launched into the ocean with only GPS transmitters that report back their locations as they move. Designed to move perfectly with the wind and currents. Think of it as sail up and sail down. A sail above the water catches wind, like a mini boat. A sail below the surface follows currents, like a drifter. It's kind of like a message in a bottle, but way better. Student built from a kit, customized by each classroom. Most mini boats are launched into the Big Blue to connect classrooms across the globe. Educational passages mini boats have actually landed in over thirty six countries so far, thanks to hundreds of schools over the years. But boats like the Riptide and Rockstar are built with a special purpose to investigate those sea turtle strandings. Why? Because, well, they move just like the turtles. Wind affects their movement, and more information is needed to help them survive. So you work with the Mass Audubon, NOAA, the Gulf of Mean Lobster Foundation, and others to help them with their research. This is not learning from a textbook, it's learning by doing. And link to the standards in a very unique way. You get to see firsthand just how the ocean moves. You build the tools, guided by the best teachers who bring ocean science to life, and supported by researchers, engineers, and community partners. It started back in 2016 with launching the Rockstar Miniboat. Not just to get location, which is great, but temperature too. What's happening in the water and at the surface? The Rockstar was deployed off Corporation Beach in Dennis. It crossed the bay in just 10 hours and landed in Truro and collected data. Success. The very first mini boat with sensors. The season continued with a few dozen deployments of drifters from the student drifter program. More were launched in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, the project had grown. Student drifters, wind turtles, and the miniboat Riptide were all launched into the bay multiple times to help with this research. And they all had interesting results. The Miniboat crossed the bay in just four hours before the deployers even got home that day. That showed how powerful the wind really is. The drifters and miniboat were relaunched multiple times during November that year. The work was even published later in a scientific paper. In the fall of 2022, Falmouth High School students expanded the project. While building the drifters, students also repaired the mini boat along with two more that were donated to the project. They added sensor packs to all three mini boats, not just location, but now heading, pitch, and of course temperature, both air and sea surface. Every hour. Students are no longer just building tools, they're building data platforms. But it didn't go as we thought it would, and that became part of the learning. Two of the boats are launched by the Coast Guard on December twenty first. The boats travel northeast overnight, heading towards Race Point the next day, but the wind shifts and they loop. Just hours later, they land in situate. One of them even lands right near the office of Noah Stalwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The next morning staff go out and find Riptide right away. Then they walk a little further down and find Rockstar. Both are recovered before the tide came back in. In February, the students present about the project at the Falmouth Education Foundation's Funds and Action Showcase. Then in March, a third mini boat was launched by the Coast Guard, the Scarborough Sailor, along with another Falmouth Drifter. Overnight, the boat made its way to Plymouth right before the students presented about this very project at the annual Falmouth Steam Fair. The tide and waves made it too difficult to recover that afternoon, though, so it spent the night on the seawall. And unfortunately by the next day, the boat was heavily damaged and unable to sail again. It became a good lesson on what the weather and the ocean can do. More drifters are launched in April, May, June, and in the fall of 2023, a new class in Falmouth built more drifters and tested a new design, this one with no sails at all. Students also repair the riptide in Rockstar. Two mini boats and two mini drifters are deployed by Captain Dave, a fisherman on December 2nd. The mini boats head quickly to the northeast. The riptide was even spotted at sea a few hours after launch. The mini drifters stay behind, much slower than the boats. One boat crossed the bay in hours, the other went south and landed on the other side. On december fifteenth, they're launched again, this time with two student drifters. The boats go northeast again, almost following the same path as the previous launch, even though they were launched in different places, but this time they both land on the other side of the bay by the afternoon. As for the drifters, one stayed for weeks, but another didn't stay in the bay very long at all. It escaped. It traveled out into the open ocean, looping through major ocean currents, riding along the continental shelf, and eventually reaching the Gulf Stream. Another successful season, to say the least. In the fall of 2024, the fleet was complete, two sails up, one sail down, and two no sails at all. They're all launched from the research vessel the Tioga on April 8, 2025 by Captain Pete and the crew from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They were heading out to do some sampling. Same launch, different designs, different results. The mini boats land to the west just hours later. The mini drifters landed next, and the student drifter ended up where a large pot of right whales were sighted a few days later. And you learn something new. Whale food drifts too. With each year of this project, a new group of students took part and added something, a drawing, a layer of epoxy or two. Every launch revealed something new, but always to answer the same question, how does the water move? When you check the data, you're not just looking at dots, you're noticing patterns. The drifters move differently than the boats. The weather conditions matter. This connects what you learn in the classroom with what's happening out there in the little blue bay and the big blue ocean. You start thinking about everything that moves the same way your mini boats and drifters move, the sea turtle, the whale food, an oil spill, a search and rescue team. You're watching pathways, and maybe you start to see your own pathway too, because while you're tracking your fleet, you're also seeing the bigger picture. You look at the other ones at sea, each is out there for a purpose. Sometimes it's for connection. Like a mini drifter that was gifted to Falmouth's sister school in Cabo Verde by a group that traveled there in 2024, a small island nation off West Africa, another cape on the other side of the Atlantic, three thousand three hundred nautical miles between them, one formed by glaciers, one by volcanoes, but both connected by people and sea turtles. After the visit, a group of senior students there walked down to where the land meets the sea and tossed the drifter into the surf. It traveled west. Students tracked it together from both capes. Over time, it moved toward the Caribbean. For exactly one year and two days it drifted all the way to the Bahamas. This is science and it's real research that has real impact, because the same currents that carry the mini boats and drifters inside the bay and out are the ones that power our global and local economies. Cape to Cape, it all connects. And once you know how the water moves, you can search more effectively, rescue faster, improve navigation, and strengthen coastal resilience while also protecting marine life. This is what people mean when they talk about the blue economy, and this project is the blue economy in action. And none of it happens without people, champions like Jim Manning, Cheryl Milliken, Carmela Majewski, and the many students whose hands have built, repaired, and relaunched all of these tools over the years. And the network of support behind every launch, educators, researchers, community partners, every fisherman and volunteer beachwalker, and of course funders like the Falmouth Education Foundation. They are in many ways the wind in our sails, powering the work of educational passages and our public schools forward. And now it's time to write the next chapter. We are looking for your support and sponsorship to help fund the next part of this story, to help another group of students repair these boats and drifters, get them online, and send them back out again. But this time we want to send them all together into the big blue ocean. What will happen next? Well, the truth is that we don't fully know yet, and that's the point, but it's something we can discover together. So the question is, do you want to be a part of it? You have been listening to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization. Please consider making a donation to help us continue our work bringing people together to learn more about the ocean. To donate, head over to educationalpassages.org slash support. 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. Thanks for listening to the