Students at Washington Island School are depending on robots like Bubbles and Pablo to help them earn a berth in an international competition.

With support from the Door County Maritime Museum for the second year in a row, Washington Island School competed in a virtual SeaPerch competition over Zoom on Friday in hopes of qualifying for the international challenge in June.

SeaPerch is an aquatic robot students build before unleashing them into the water where they have to navigate an obstacle course and complete a mission.

Washington Island expanded the program to involve more students this year, which allowed members of last year’s team to mentor the others. Teacher Miranda Dahlke says it was great to see that they applied what they learned last year to their new robots.

The SeaPerch program emphasizes science, technology, engineering, and math concepts. Technology education teacher Matt LeBrun says the students also learned a lot about problem-solving as they experimented a little more with some of the robot’s different features.

Washington Island is the only local school competing in this year’s SeaPerch competition. Last year, Sevastopol won the regional competition at Southwest High School in Green Bay. The pandemic prevented them from competing in the international competition at the University of Maryland.

Screenshot is from Friday's competition on Zoom