Clatsop Community College
1653 Jerome, Astoria OR 97103
For immediate release
Contact: Gene Bock (503) 338-7605

Local High School Students Earn Second Place at Regional ROV Competition

Three local high school students earned second place in the Second Annual Student Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) Pacific Northwest Regional Challenge held in Olympia, Washington over the weekend. Wesley Humphries and David McAloney of Astoria High School and Cody Rogers of Knappa High School competed against teams from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia with the ROV they and three other local high school students built as part of their seamanship class held at Clatsop Community College’s MERTS campus.

The CCC team had the highest score in the operations category of the competition. They had to operate the machine they built in a swimming pool, performing numerous assigned tasks. For example, using only underwater cameras they also designed, the team had to manipulate the ROV to retrieve an object at the bottom of a pool using a line. This task was meant to simulate in which a ship had accidentally dropped an anchor and had to retrieve it using only a line. The team went on to score third place in the competition’s engineering evaluation, to earn a second place overall finish.

The ROV project was led by CCC instructor Gene Bock and Dan Abraham from OHSU’s Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction (http://www.stccmop.org).
Seamanship is just one of the career and technical education programs available to students while in high school at Clatsop Community College’s MERTS (Maritime and Environmental Research and Training Station) Campus. Other programs offered to high school students include Maritime Sciences, Fire Science, Welding, Automotive and Drafting.


Left to right: Wesley Humphries of Astoria High School, Cody Rogers of Knappa High School, David McAloney of Astoria High School and CCC Maritime Science Instructor Gene Bock at the Regional ROV Competition held in Oylmpia, Washington on Saturday, May 12.