Wall-E's brother: Hector the Collecter!

Hector the Collector!

I woke up this morning excited to get the day started as I put on my baby blue polo with that spectacular badge stitched over my heart that reads "Save the Harbor, Save the Bay." As usual on a Wednesday morning, I made my way to Community Boating eager to commence our activities. That was when I was informed that the Rozalia project had set up shop on the maintenance deck. To be honest, I did not know what the Rozalia project was, in full detail, until today! When Sarah Bailey, my senior marine educator, asked who wanted to take the kids to maintenance deck, my curiosity exceeded me. I wanted to learn more about this project and what its mission was. I found out that the Rozalia Project is an organization that cleans up the trash in our waters using various methods. As a future engineer, I was excited to find out that the method they chose to present on this beautiful hot summer day was an ROV named Hector the Collector!

The Controls

Hector the Collector is controlled by a computer with a monitoring screen. Connected to this computer is a controller but not like the one you might use for your Xbox or Playstation. They even had a computer that monitored the sonar placed right under the camera on Hector! It was really cool seeing all this technology! It is great exposing the kids to these such things because technology is a growing market in our society.

The net support for Hector the Collector

It was a great presentation and the kids loved it! They got to see what was under water and at bottom of the river through the camera located on the front of Hector. Some of the kids even helped pull the trash out of the water by placing a net under Hector when he grabbed a plastic cup or a corroded can and catching it when the claw released. I was so fascinated by the technology and wanted to learn everything I could about this robot. I love my job now more than ever for exposing me to this because I would not have experienced such a wonderful activity had I not joined the Save the Harbor team!

Engaged in our learning!

The best part of this one hour lesson with the Rozalia Project was finding a not so common piece of trash at the bottom of the Charles River. As we watched Hector the Collector prowl the river floor on the monitor we noticed something sticking out of the muddy sand. It was dark colored and coiled which at first we thought was a spring of some sort. Then as I looked at it closer, I thought it looked more like a key chain. When we finally got it hooked and brought it up to the surface, it did in fact turn out to be a key chain with one key attached! It was the first key found by the Rozalia Project and Save the Harbor and Community boating were the first to experience it with them as well!

Collin reunited with his key!

To make it even better, as we were valiantly showing off the key we had found, a community boating staff realized that it was their key that we had found. His name was Collin and he identified his key that he had last three weeks prior to the Rozalia project visit. The key opened up the fitting rooms in a Banana Republic he worked in as a second job. Not only were we the first group to find a key with the Rozalia project, we were also the first group to reunite a lost key found in the waters to its rightful owner. What a morning that was! This has to be the best day of my summer so far!