INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A Lake Wales middle school’s sense relief to hear its missing weather balloon — with “Neil the cockroach” on board — had been found, turned to deflation when the project went missing again.
On April 15 the Bok Academy Middle School launched a high-altitude weather balloon, along with a roach named “Neil.” The Styrofoam cylinder with a GPS tracker on it — which is no longer transmitting — washed up in the Moorings community south of Vero Beach two days later.
A group of students and their STEM teacher Richele Floyd are desperately asking for people’s help in finding and returning the container, which contains all of their data for the project, including two GoPro cameras and a small computer with a sensor.
Before making landfall, the balloon splashed down 13 miles east of the Sebastian Inlet on April 15. Seas that day were 6-8 feet with winds hitting 20-25 knots. According to Floyd, no captains from any charters would take payment to retrieve the project.
On April 17, a volunteer with Indian River County Sea Turtle Program, Kate Hoffmann, spotted the project washed up on the shore. When she later saw one of the posters that the teacher posted in the area about the package, Hoffmann went back to retrieve the container, but it had disappeared. Hoffmann initially did not want to collect the package, thinking it was an active project.
“I knew it was something weird,” said Hoffmann. “This is very strange,” she thought. “I couldn’t figure out what it was.”
When she saw the flyer later at Round Island Park she exclaimed, “Oh my God! That’s what I found.”
Students at the school have sent up weather balloons for the past two years. This is the first year they added a passenger — Neil. And this is the first time it has traveled more than 40 miles from the school.
“The electronics are our only recorded data,” said Floyd. “That’s the only way we’ll get the information back.”
To make matters worse, the students had entered the Global Space Balloon competition. If they do not get the data back, they will not be able to compete with the 359 other teams from 53 countries.
Anyone with information about the school project is asked to contact veronews.com or the Bok Academy.
A Twitter campaign has been started with the hashtag #SaveNeil.
“We’ve gotta save Neil,” said Hoffmann.
