Cobscook Bay's dramatic tidal range and strong currents have made it difficult to predict the impacts of events, such as oil spills or diseases that plague Downeast Maine’s salmon farms. Sea Grant has been working with the Cobscook Bay Resource Center and high school students in Lubec and Eastport since 1999 to monitor these tidal circulation patterns with drifters. One of the goals of the project is to involve students in collecting meaningful scientific data about the waters surrounding their communities.
The students have monitored the movement of drifting PVC buoys throughout a six-hour tidal cycle using hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) units.  Beginning in 2004, the project team has also deployed Convertible Accurate Surface Tracker (CAST) drifters that contain GPS units. Data from the drifters is exported from ArcView into a format for distribution to researchers at the University of Maine and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and maps for each trial are produced  (http://www.cobscook.org/maps/driftStudy.htm).