On April 29th a small group from FEUP, Univ. of Porto, visited High School Jose Regio, in Vila do Conde in the Porto region. Working with a local science teacher, researchers Nuno Queiroz and Filipe Ferreira gave a brief presentation about the upcoming experiment, its motivation for science and enginerring and the robots to be used for the experiment. A total of 18 8th grade students along with their science teacher listen raptly to Queiroz and Ferreira and then piled them with questions. A normally boisterous bunch, the students were very focused and stayed over their class period. With this introduction, we have set the process for engagement during the experiment when we expect the students to keep track of what fish (and their tags) and make predictions where they might end up. The project will provide near real-time science data, including wind and current predictions running ocean models from collaborators from UPCT, Cartagena.

Meanwhile, researchers in the LSTS/FEUP lab continued to work late to wrap up production of the recently received 40 ARGOS tags and work in nearby APDL, Lexioes (the port) on fine tuning the AUVs for upcoming operations. Fortuna and Joel meanwhile worked with technicians from Marine Technologies to install and test the satcom antenna on the R/V Diplodus down in Ohlao. Margarida Faria continued to make last minute adjustments to the HUB (central web services) while Sara Costa ensured that loose ends for logistics, transport and trip planning were taken care of.