DELAWARE

Coast Day from University of Delaware returns to Lewes with touch tanks, Legos and robots

Matt Moore
The Daily Times
The touch tank was a popular stop as Coast Day was held at the University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean and Environment in Lewes in 2014

After a blistering nor’easter and a renovation project caused an unexpected two-year hiatus, University of Delaware’s Coast Day returns to Lewes Sunday.

Now in its 39th installation, Coast Day is a free event that sees the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment provide hands-on interactions with ocean and science.

“The idea is to get people thinking about the environment, get them outside and engaged in all the research and science that’s going on in the state and around them,” said Chris Petrone, a Delaware Sea Grant education specialist and one of Coast Day’s coordinators.

Since its inception, the predominant moving force behind Coast Day has been Sea Grant.

Sea Grant, initially established by Congress in 1976, is a program that works to address major marine challenges. The University of Delaware received its first Sea Grant funding in 1968 for oyster research.

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), a robotic technology, will be on display during Coast Day.

Since then, it has worked with the university on projects like establishing the College of Marine Studies and pioneering Coast Day.  

Usually scheduled on the first Sunday in October, the event was halted for two years, which left its organizers feeling stalled.

“There was some concern that we’d fallen off the radar,” Petrone said, explaining that during the two-year pause on Coast Day, dozens of students graduated and faculty retired.

“A lot of the students that are participating on Sunday have never seen it,” he said.

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Despite the challenges, Petrone said, he and other organizers from the Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, the Environmental Public Education Office and the College of Earth Ocean and Environment are more than prepared for this year’s event.

Planning for Coast Day began in March, as the group met monthly through August, then shifted to weekly meetings in September.

According to Petrone, this year’s Coast Day will bring back a number of crowd favorites, including touch tanks, tours of several docked vessels and the Teach Fleet — a “fleet” of 50-75 Lego ships.

Coast Day fans can also hear live music and eat seafood prepared by local chefs during the Crab Cake Cook-Off and the Seafood Chowder Challenge.

Petrone said nearly 100 exhibits will be set underneath tents outside the sprawling grounds of University of Delaware’s Hugh R. Sharp Campus.

People who go to Coast Day can also step inside Cannon Lab for lectures and more interactions with science.  

Abby and Molly Brooks, along with Kemble and Josephine Wellons, all from Wilmington, listen as Andrew Jenner talks at Coast Day at the University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean and Environment in Lewes in 2014.

In addition to a number of Coast Day favorites, a new element this year is the recently-finished Robotics Discovery Laboratory, open to the public for the first time.

For Karen Roberts, communication specialist at the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, this year is the perfect time to open the lab up and educate the public.

“With the advent of technology and all the robotics technologies that a lot of our faculty use in their research, that was the impetus and reason — because it’s timely,” she said.

Roberts said that in the robotics lab, Coast Day fans will have the opportunity to see innovative technology and even meet a few robots.

“They’ll be able to see the tools that researchers who go out in the water, or who go out in the arctic, or down in the Bahamas or over in Palal,” she said.

“The robots themselves are very charismatic,” Petrone said.

Coast Day is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1. Parking and admission are free.

“Because we’ve had this break for two years, we’re excited to get back out there and I think folks in the community are excited that it’s back.”

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