ORONO, Maine — Ocean ridges. Penguin anatomy. Water pollution. The location of the Marianas Trench.
It took a wide range of knowledge to compete in Saturday’s Nor’Easter Bowl, the Northern New England regional competition of the 2009 National Ocean Sciences Bowl.
About 100 high school students from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont took part in the daylong event in the Donald P. Corbett Building on the University of Maine campus and hosted by UM’s School of Marine Sciences.
Not only did students have to know their stuff, but they also had to answer questions under pressure.
The questions, done quiz-show style with buzzers and lights, were all in the areas of biology, chemistry, geology, geography and social sciences. The toughest questions were at the level of a master’s degree student, said coordinator Brenda Zollitsch.
“This is a good level [of difficulty],” said Denise Young, a Bucksport High School science teacher who escorted the school’s first Nor’Easter Bowl team. “We were actually a lot more nervous coming in, so when they saw some of the questions after the first round they got some success under their belt, they felt good about it, and they’ve done well after that.”
Bucksport finished eighth out of 18 teams — six of the 18 participating schools sent two teams — which qualified the team members for a prize.
First prize, which went to one of the two teams from Contoocook Valley High School in Peterborough, N.H., included an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the 2009 National Ocean Sciences Bowl and five $1,000 UM scholarships from the College of Natural Sciences.
Contoocook Valley — or ConVal — narrowly defeated a team from South Burlington High School of South Burlington, Vt., for first place. One of the teams from Morse High School of Bath placed third.
The second- and third-place teams each received scholarships and a choice of field trips in the northern New England area. Options included cruises, sea kayak trips, guided tours, and lab visits with scientists in Maine and New Hampshire.
The rest of the top eight teams each received a choice of a field trip they could pick in order of their finish.
Teams from Souhegan High School of Amherst, N.H., South Burlington, Morse and Sanford High School rounded out the rest of the top seven, respectively.
Other schools participating were Waterville, Poland, Nokomis Regional of Newport, Ashland, Islesboro and Capital Area Technical School of Augusta.
The competition began with a round-robin tournament in the morning to determine seedings for the afternoon’s double-elimination round. The bottom two teams in round-robin competition were eliminated from the next round.
The double-elimination matches consisted of two six-minute rounds of toss-up questions, with two written group challenges in between. The team with the most points by the end of the match won and advanced to the next round.
The four Bucksport students on Smith’s team are in her biology or marine biology classes and also compete in similar environmental competitions. They didn’t have much time to prepare for the competition outside of class, however.
“I think we did a lot better than we thought we were going to do,” said Bucksport team captain Kelly Bourgon, who is a junior. “Some of the written questions were pretty hard.”
In fact, Bucksport made it fairly deep into the afternoon rounds. The team won its first matchup against one of the ConVal teams 40-36, then lost to a Morse squad 87-26, and came from behind to beat the same ConVal team again, this time 38-32½. Bucksport finally fell to Morse’s other team 64-33.
Some Nor’Easter Bowl participants also visited the Maine Aquatic Research Center on the UM campus, and took walking tours of the campus.
Ashland High School senior Miranda Donovan, who will study nursing at UM next year, said that even though none of her teammates is interested now in marine studies — Ashland is hours away from the ocean —the Nor’Easter Bowl gave her a chance to see the campus again.
“A lot of us are nursing and the rest of us are pretty much agriculture,” Donovan said. “It’s good to have fun and experience something different. We’re used to envirothons, so we decided to do something different.”
The competition rotates every three years among UM, the University of New England in Biddeford, and the University of New Hampshire. UNE is the site of the 2010 competition.