In 2004, NOAA sent out a request to high school science teachers to have their students enter the "Name the Research Boat" contest. New Hampshire senator John Sununu also sent a letter asking New Hampshire teachers to enter the contest. John was my student a few years ago in Salem, NH so I thought I'd give it a try and had my students work on the very difficult group project. To my surprise, several of my students' entries were selected for the "Top Ten" and the group who had selected "Henry B. Bigelow" as a name actually won the contest. Henry B. Bigelow (1879-1967) was a Harvard professor and the first director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He extensively studied the Gulf of Maine and the area off the New Hampshire coast is now called the Bigelow Bight in his honor.
