News Photo by Reagan Voetberg Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) students Devin Howell, Jared Pitras, and Sonya Laws are pictured on the NOAA research vessel. They are working on a capstone project to earn their bachelor’s degree in Marine Technology.

ALPENA — Three Northwestern Michigan College marine technology students researched for their capstone project last week at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Students Devin Howell, Jared Pitras, and Sonya Laws are working on their capstone project as a team. With the guidance of Thunder Bay Sanctuary staff, Howell, Pitras, and Laws went out into Lake Huron on the research vessel to begin their research for the project.

Howell is from Millington, near Frankenmuth. Pitras is from Walled Lake, which is a little bit north of Novi. Laws is from a military family and grew up in many places, but has been in Michigan for seven years, she said.

Howell said that going into college, he was looking for something marine biology related. He liked the small class sizes at NMC.

“I really had a love for just messing around and tinkering with stuff, especially with my background in GIS, geographic information systems, basically just map making with that, and that being integrated into the program really kind of just tied it together for me,” Howell said.

Pitras said that when he was introduced to the program, he was really impressed by all the equipment and technology that is available to students.

“I was looking for a more technical application of my science background and this program has provided it,” Pitras said.

Laws said she has a background in robotics,

“I didn’t want to necessarily go pursue it,” she said. “Because I didn’t know what it was capable of, and then finding this program was like, ‘oh actually there’s tons of uses for underwater robotics.'”

Laws will be back at the Sanctuary in July as an Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) technician doing pipeline inspections.

During the week, the team went out on the research vessel three times. They mapped out the bottom of Lake Huron using multibeam sonar. They also used an ROV to dive on a shipwreck to search for a lost wrench, Pitras said.

The capstone project is tied in with their project management class, where they had to present what the project was going to be, work with a client, develop a budget, and perform risk analysis.

Laws said that while they won’t necessarily need three people to do surveying on the research vessel later on in the project, it was necessary for the early stages.

She said that one person drives the ROV, one assists, and one helps run the tether.