(girl) The oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are dying off.

(2nd girl) We wanted to go out and see if restored reefs are actually working.

Wow, we get to film underwater robot.

Modify it, then we tested it.

[all cheer] (Izzie) Major funding for "SciGirls" is provided by the National Science Foundation-- supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation-- where discoveries begin!

(woman) Additional funding provided by L'Oreal USA.

For girls in science... you can learn more at ForGirlsInScience.org And by PPG Industries Foundation-- committed to bringing positive impact to our communities.

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) We need you (girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) Come on!

When I need help, and I've got a question There's a place I go for inspiration Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation What girls?

(Izzie) SciGirls!

Whoo!

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) I need you!

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) Come on!

You've gotta log on, post, upload, pitch in!

Yeah!

Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating?

The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting, (girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) We need you!

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) SciGirls!!

Whoa, check that guy out!

Look at the lips!

Forget the lips, check out that bling!

Who, this little thing?

This is my grandpop's champion football ring.

Wanna see it?

Oh-oh yeah!

Ah, uh, did I mention my grandpop had really tiny hands?

You want some help?

[both grunt] [gasps] [splash!

Gurgling] No!!

Life flashing before eyes!

My pop's gonna' kill me.

I had so many plans; I was going to see the Grand Canyon, and make a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln out of bacon.

[sarcastically] Yeah, well, we wouldn't want the world to miss out on that.

I'm going in after it.

Whoa, aqua dude, I don't think you really want to do that.

Fine, but I gotta get that ring back.

Oh, oh, I know, I was just playing this cool game with the SciGirls.

Look, you get to build an underwater robot.

Maybe we can get some ideas from it!

Oh I am sure glad my SciGirls have gone mobile.

SciGirls!

Got a fishy situation, and we need some help.

Lookin' for the submarine.

Oh, here!

Watch for the arrows!

They're clues for the "Pick'M, Stick'M" game on the website.

(Jade) I met Taylor, Hunter, and Akina at the Oyster Restoration Center, and we wanted to learn about oysters.

My name is Jade, I'm 13 years old.

When I grow up, I want to be an engineer that works on the next renewable energy source, that'll keep on going forever.

I'm in 8th grade.

7th.

7th.

7th, oh!

I'm Hunter, and I am 12 years old.

When I grow up, I really want to be a marine biologist and learn more about how animals live in the different environments.

What's your favorite type of animal?

Rabbits are cool, I like how they eat carrots, like... [all laugh] Hi, I'm Taylor, and I'm 12 years old.

My mom's an engineer, my dad works with computers, so I might want to do something like that when I grow up.

For a field trip I got to go on a boat and we got to dredge for oysters.

My name's Akina, I'm 12 years old and I live near the Chesapeake Bay.

I'm really interested in learning about how things work and helping the environment so we can make the world a better place.

I think these are baby oysters.

[girls giggle] Oysters are good for the bay because they filter water and that's really good, because right now, the Chesapeake Bay's water isn't doing that well.

We found out that the oysters have declined and that is affecting the bay water and it's getting really dirty.

(Taylor) The Oyster Restoration Center is kind of like a nursery for baby oysters, so they take old oyster shells and they grow baby oysters on them.

When the baby oysters get big enough, they put them in a restored reef in the Chesapeake Bay so that the oyster population can grow.

All these different creatures like living around these, I'm sure that means they're pretty healthy.

The oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are dying off, so the Oyster Restoration Center is doing work to create these restored reefs.

Alright guys, so how are we supposed to figure out if these oyster reefs are actually working?

We could look for like, the blue crabs and the mud crabs and the grass shrimp in the oyster reefs.

So we're trying to discover if the oysters in the restored oyster reef are making the bay healthier.

When there's more biodiversity, it means that animals want to hang out there because they know it's going to be healthy and it's going to stay healthy.

So we decided to compare the biodiversity of the two reefs.

Hi girls!

(SciGirls) Hi.

(Hunter) We met with Cecily at the Naval Academy, she's an oceanographer.

What were you guys talking about?

We just want to figure out what makes a reef healthy.

(Akina) The only problem is that the reefs are way down at the bottom of the ocean.

(Cecily) So in real life, oceanographers do deploy remotely operated vehicles, you can drive it in the water to do some sampling.

I have some friends here at the Naval Academy who know how to build one.

Oh wow, that's perfect!

(Jade) Cecily helped us design the experiment to compare the two reefs and she suggested that we use an underwater robot, so we could see the reefs firsthand.

We're going to use the underwater robot to put bags of old oysters at the bottom of the two reefs, then we're going to take the bags back up and compare what organisms we saw in each reef.

So I guess we're going to have to build an ROV to place these and then bring them back up for us to look at.

You're going to meet Angela and Jaye to help build your ROV.

You guys are the scientists in this one.

I'll be interested to see what data you all collect.

(SciGirls) Thank you!

(Cecily) You're welcome, good luck!

[trumpet and snare drum play] When we first got to the Naval Academy, we met Jaye and Angela.

Hi, welcome to the Naval Academy, I'm Angela.

(SciGirls) Hi Angela.

And I'm Jaye.

I teach ocean engineering here at the Naval Academy.

I'm a naval architect here.

We have some underwater robots we'd like you to see that I think might help a little bit with your problem.

[electronic music plays] (Hunter) When I first saw the Sea Perch robots, I expected them maybe to be a little bit bigger.

Welcome to our ballast tank.

This is where the naval architecture students usually test small ships and make sure they're properly weighted.

This is a Sea Perch right here.

What it's made of is, we have 3 hobby shop motors.

The controller has 2 toggle switches, the 2 buttons on the top run the up and down of the Sea Perch.

The toggle switches run the forwards and backwards motors.

(Hunter) Whoever's that is, I'm tangled in it.

(Akina) It was hard, 'cause you had to like, know which way to control it and like, how to control it.

It was fun though-- it takes skill!

(Jade) Hunter was totally dominating the Sea Perches and she could drive it and maneuver it in ways that I couldn't do.

Now that you've experimented with the Sea Perch and you've seen some of their capability, we'd like to know what it is that you want to do with it.

We wanted to compare a new oyster reef with an old reef, and we wanted to see if the new reefs are really working.

This is just the standard Sea Perch that comes in the kit that anyone can build, but we have some modifications that we've made to them, and you can brainstorm and see what would be best for your mission.

Okay, that would be great!

This is our project laboratory where we design things.

(SciGirls) Cool!

(Angela) Think of this as your toy box, that is a Sea Perch kit.

And this is everything that your Sea Perch was made out of, that you just used; all the parts are in there.

So we have some Sea Perch we've modified.

These are ones that our students here have used.

This one was made with the same kit, but look at it.

(SciGirls) Oh wow!

It's a lot different.

Then this one is really different.

You can make it any shape you want to.

(Angela) You said you might want to use a camera?

(SciGirls) Yeah.

(Angela) What's really neat about this is, the output goes, right there in this little TV screen.

(Hunter) That is really cool!

(Angela) Now you've seen some examples of the Sea Perch we've modified, and some of the tools we have for you to use.

I'd like you to sit down and brainstorm about it.

What shape should our Sea Perch be and what kind of motor should we use?

We might need something that would keep up with all the weight that might be putting on it by the camera and the bags, so it's stronger.

(Jade) So we might need those big motors.

(Akina) How are we going carry the bag?

(Jade) We could do a claw.

So you have a motor here and a motor here, and then once we need a release, we turn these motors this way and then it will like-- that's good!

(Akina) Jade loved the brainstorming.

I think she does think like an engineer.

Why don't we draw a picture of it so that we can have a plan when we start building.

(SciGirls) Yeah.

How's it going?

Good.

Is this your design?

Yeah, it's basically a mixture of this Sea Perch and this other structure.

Plus the features on this.

(Akina) Yeah, for our claw, we're going to have two small motors Then they'll close on the bags to hold it in.

Our first design had these 2 claws that would come in and grab the oyster sacks.

Jaye told us: In engineering, the more complex things you have, the more there is that can go wrong.

So we decided to remove the 2 motors and replace it with a hook.

I think you have some great ideas here; time to start building.

[making a sustained tone] [whirring] [SciGirls laugh] It's going to be really fun watching something that we built actually do something to make a difference.

[SciGirls cheer] Hi, my name's Akina.

I was born in Canada.

Whoo, whoo!

This is my dog Ogee, this is my dad, this is my mom, this is my little brother.

I do gymnastics.

Hello, my name is Jade, my family and I love organic gardening.

I love to come here and play tennis.

These are my parakeets.

I made a graph for the amount of poop there is on the curtains before and after we got the parakeets.

One of my favorite things to do is robotics.

(Angela) So here you are at the ballast tank and you're going to test your model.

When we first went to set down our Sea Perch in the water, I was really excited and I was like, what's going to happen?

Here it goes.

Oh!

And it just sat there.

Maybe now that we don't have the camera touching the bottom at all, we don't need the foam.

(Jade) The chunk of blue foam, it wasn't perfect for our robot, we didn't want a boat, we wanted an ROV to go underwater.

(Jaye) Maybe we could just try modifying it and taking that foam off.

Go ahead... yea!

(Jaye) You're getting a lot closer, aren't you?

(Jade) We just need more.

(Jaye) You just have a little positive buoyancy now.

(Jade) Buoyancy has to do with water displacement, and it's important to know when we were building our Sea Perch because we didn't want to have our robot floating on the surface or the bottom of the tank.

We want it in the middle, so neutral buoyancy, where if you put it somewhere, it'll just stay there, 'cause it's perfectly balanced out.

What if we cut these into smaller pieces?

Or just like, took some of it off, just so it's not as buoyant.

Oh, yea!

Oh now it's going too far deep.

(Akina) As we started taking stuff off, we started sinking to the bottom, so we were negatively buoyant.

I think we should take one of the weights.

Okay.

(Taylor) We had to change the design of our Sea Perch a lot of times, We had to modify it, then we tested it, modify it, test it.

We've got it almost there.

Okay, going down, going down.

Could we try it up?

Now go forward, go up.

Oh yes, it works!

Yes, oh yeah!

We should practice using the monitor.

Designing, building and testing our robot at the Naval Academy was my favorite part because we got to see how our robot worked and we had so many experimental issues; it was really fun.

There, now try to lift up.

Do we have it?

We have it!

[all cheer] Oh yeah!

Nice job!

Oh high-fives all around.

Notice the water current.

We have to test water current.

When our ROV picked up the oysters in the still tank, I was like yes, our robot can accomplish this.

Then there's this little thing in the back of my head that said, there's current in the water; I was like, oh!

Welcome to the Carderock Division of the Naval Service Warfare Center.

(Jade) We took our robot to Carderock to see how it would do in current, but first we wanted to test it in deeper water.

Alright, here it goes.

Try to get it all the way to the bottom.

There it goes.

It's gone.

It's at the bottom, yeah.

Oh look, some bubbles are coming up.

It's not really coming up that much, it's not really doing anything.

Once we got to the bottom, we couldn't get back up!

I don't think that it's going to come up, honestly.

(Angela) So what do you think's causing this?

(Akina) Um, maybe the water is pushing down on it, since it's so deep.

It doesn't have enough buoyancy to get back up.

So why don't you tell us why your vehicle's behaving differently today.

The robot is under 9 feet of water and the water pressure is a lot greater than 4 feet.

So we think that's why it's not coming back up.

What else could you do to reduce weight and improve buoyancy?

(Jade) Add more floats?

These floats are filled with water, so they're quite heavy.

That's an excellent observation, Akina.

Squeeze this one and squeeze that one, see what the difference is.

These weren't made for 9 feet of water.

(Jaye) So when these are 9 feet under water, they're squeezed and compressed, and they're smaller.

They're displacing less water and you have less buoyancy.

Yeah, well, what if we use these?

(Jade) We added these harder floats that wouldn't get smooshed underneath the 9 feet of water, but there wasn't enough motor power, so we added some more motors to solve the problem.

(Jaye) I think it's time to start the current and see how it goes.

(SciGirls) Yeah!

Oh what... loud.

(Akina) When the crank came on, it was so loud then it looked like the water was going really fast, but it was only half a knot.

(Jaye) You're making your way against the current.

Whoo, you're moving!

[SciGirls cheer] (SciGirls) I'm going to try to submerge it.

Is it under yet?

I think it's at the bottom.

Ta-da, whoo!

Now try to get it back up.

Okay, try to get it back up.

Okay, I'm making it come up now.

No, don't help me!

Guys, it's back up to the top!

(all) Whoo!

(Akina) We had to modify our Sea Perch a lot to get it to work.

It was hard, but in the end it was all worth it.

Are you ready to go use your Sea Perch in the bay?

Yeah!

Let's go.

You ready?

Ready!

Let 'er drop!

It's droppin'.

I see it, it's coming, it's coming!

Oh, it's going, it's going.

Sorry Jake, we've hit bottom.

You mean I've hit bottom.

We need something that'll help it float.

Hmm, all I've got is 3 Mexican jumping beans that seem to be taking a very long siesta.

Those are lima beans.

Well, that explains it.

Oh, and some balloons; I'm working on the world record for balloon blowing-- it's harder than you think.

[inhales deeply; exhales deeply] [gasping] More air.

Wait, the SciGirls had the same problem.

Jake, check this out.

Maybe the water is pushing down on it?

Since it's so deep, it's like it doesn't have enough buoyancy to get back up?

Buoyancy!

We need buoyancy.

Actually, I need air!

[acoustic guitar plays in bright rhythm] We finished all of our tests on our Sea Perch, then we met Cecily and Angela They were there to help us if we had any problems.

The Perch looks great!

you've been busy decorating.

[all laugh] Are you going to go in the water?

(SciGirls) Yeah.

Good, let's go!

(Taylor) The bay was really, really big.

After like, 5 minutes driving out into the bay, the water just met the sky.

I'm flying!

(Akina) It was really exciting; the bay seemed pretty big and our Sea Perch was really small.

Are you ready to drop it in?

Yeah.

(Cecily) It looks pretty good.

(Hunter) Now I'm going down.

I'm going to feed more cable it.

Bye-bye neon colors.

Okay, there's the bottom, okay.

(Cecily) Ah, that looked like a little oyster.

What do you think of this site, girls?

(Akina) It's pretty, like there's barely anything on the bottom.

(Hunter) At the degraded reef, all it was was like, sand and a couple oyster shells.

(Cecily) What I recommend that you do is attach a buoy onto the bag.

(Akina) We decided to put buoys on our bags 'cause the bay is ginormous and we didn't want to search the whole bay to find our bags.

Let's look at the monitor.

Did you drop it?

Did it drop off?

Yeah, it's right there.

Yes, we did it!

Let's go for the next one on.

We dropped the 3 bags, then we headed off to the restored reef.

The sun is this way.

Oh yes, the sun is that way!

So we're at the restored reef?

We're gonna go down there and look.

Okay, is the camera on?

Yeah.

Wow!

The bottom is just covered with oysters!

[exclaiming excitedly] Oh, it's a blue crab!

It's huge!

I know, it is.

Oh see the fish.

Did you see the fish?

(Jade) The second reef we saw mounds of oysters and we also saw a blue crab, which is a predator of the oyster.

So that means predators want to hang out there.

And we also saw a striped bass.

Here's our first bag, yeah.

The restored reef, so hopefully it's much better.

There we go.

We finished dropping the 3 bags at the restored reef and it was really awesome to know that our ROV could actually work in a real-world situation.

[cheers & applause] We did amazing, it was so good!

I'm proud of you.

Good job!

[all cheer] See you in two weeks.

Two weeks, yeah!

Hi, my name is Hunter.

My house is just minutes away from the Chesapeake Bay.

This is Angel, this my dog Lady.

Take it!

I'm on the first Lego League Robotics Team.

Bye!

Hi, I'm Taylor, this is my house.

Let me show you my room.

I love sports; these are my trophies.

This is a robot I made.

I play trumpet in my school band.

(Akina) I was really excited waiting for two weeks.

And then once we got onto the boat and went out there, it was even more exciting, because like, this was when we got to like, see what actually happened.

There's the yellow one.

There, I see it it's right there.

[all cheer] (Akina) After we pulled up the bags, we put them in a bucket of bay water so we could examine the life forms that were on them the next day.

[all cheer] It was fun pulling them up, using that hook.

It was just a lot of fun-- the whole experience!

[all cheer] Yeah!

I got it!

(Jade) We started looking at the shells from the degraded reef, so we had two charts, one for the degraded reef and one for the restored reef, and we just had what organism and how many of the organism that we saw.

(Hunter) I was surprised to see some of the mud crabs in the degraded reef.

I was expecting there to be nothing.

I can't wait to see what we can find on the restored reef.

I think I found a grass shrimp you guys.

Oh really?

Another bristle worm.

Okay.

We opened the healthy reef and it smelled really bad.

Then we found 4 dead fish in there.

It wasn't so great for the fish, but it was good to know that there were some creatures living there.

[all laugh] There's our discoveries of the restored oyster reef.

Let's put these in a graph so we can draw a better conclusion.

Dead fish fingers.

(Jade) After we had all of our data, we decided to put it in a bar graph so that we could see it better, and Taylor was really a good person for this 'cause she's very precise and was really good with the software.

(Akina) You can definitely tell that the restored reef looks much healthier than the degraded reef.

So it shows that the restored reef has a lot more biodiversity and lots of different animals there than the degraded reef.

In the restored reef we saw a blue crab and blue crabs like to eat oysters, so it's a good thing because we saw a predator of the oyster there.

(Taylor) So it was like a buffet for the predators that were there.

Yeah, you don't want to go to a restaurant with no food!

We should show it to Cecily, see what she thinks.

(all) Hi!

(Cecily) Hi girls, how are you guys doing this morning?

(SciGirls) Great!

So you guys have had some time to look at the data.

Are there any differences between what we thought was an unhealthy site and a restored reef?

Well yeah, there's actually a big difference.

What can we say about the restored reef?

That it's way healthier than the degraded reef, So would you say species diversity in abundance was higher?

Yes.

Do you guys realize what you did over these last few weeks is amazing.

The fact you built something that can get good data-- I mean, I'm impressed!

I already told a lot of people.

[all laugh] The most important question from me is, did you guys all have fun?

(all) Yes!

It was wonderful to work with you girls; you're very talented.

Okay, thank you, bye.

My favorite part of this experience was building our Sea Perch.

I thought it was really fun to hear everyone else's ideas and compile it into one giant robot.

Have to remember, everybody, got it?

Remember.

(Hunter) I think we had a really good experiment.

We all worked together really good.

Phone numbers!

Phone numbers, yeah!

We had so much fun together and we had such a great time on the boat, and this whole experience was just awesome!

Having to say good-bye was really hard.

I hope I can stay in contact with them.

Oh, good luck!

Got some clues?

Head on over to the Web and play "Pick'M, Stick'M" at pbskidsgo.org.

The eagle has gone into the water.

Then get on down here, we have a ring to catch.

Here it comes... easy.

You're not going to break any records with those balloons, but they're countering the weight of the Sea Perch perfectly.

Got it!

Thanks Izz, what would I do without you?

[chuckles] Hm, never make a statue of Lincoln out of bacon?

Exactly!

What a loss for the world that would have been.

[both laugh] Whoo!

Whoo!

I say we duct tape it up.

Oh my gosh!

Should we be worried?

[all laugh] Should we be worried?

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

(SciGirl) Ice and snow makes it sort of dangerous.

I think there's a way that we could improve nonslip footwear.

It talks about biopmimicry, so it's life copying.

could help with traction.

A prototype debut party.

Bask in my awesomeness.

San Diego is known for palm trees, but they're not even from here.

Let's catch some bugs.

Our question was what kind of impact Canary Island palm had on our ecosystem.

It happens, seem more awsome.

(Izzie) Major funding for "SciGirls" is provided by the National Science Foundation-- supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation-- where discoveries begin!

(woman) Additional funding provided by L'Oreal USA.

For girls in science... you can learn more at ForGirlsInScience.org And by PPG Industries Foundation-- committed to bringing positive impact to our communities.

Hey there!

Hi!

The SciGirls Website is off the hook!

You can set up a profile, play games, create a page for your science project, watch SciGirls videos, and have fun!

So come on-- be a SciGirl on pbskidsgo.org See you there!

Bye!

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S CC--Armour Captioning & TPT