Boat Press Release and Announcements
LOCAL – MOBILE, AL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MOBILE, AL—A Laramie, Wyoming-based nonprofit has brought a 43-foot Ocean Alexander to Dog River with an unusual job ahead of her: carrying a mobile research platform around the Great American Loop.
The 1985 trawler, ME VA, recently arrived at Dog River Marin, the temporary home of the Living Loop Lab (L³), a project of Cultivating Currents that will travel roughly 6,000 miles around the Great American Loop beginning this fall.
But getting the boat here was anything but ordinary.
Cultivating Currents founder Terry Travers had set August 10 as a hard go/no-go date for the expedition. If the organization didn’t have a boat—or a boat firmly in the works—by then, a fall launch would no longer be realistic.
Then came an email.
In mid-July, after finally coming up for air following a demanding semester, Travers began pushing in earnest to find a vessel. Within days, a boat owner contacted her asking whether Cultivating Currents might be interested in a 1985 Ocean Alexander 43′ trawler.
“I had to drop everything and head south,” Travers says.
She drove from Laramie, Wyoming, to Gulf Shores, Alabama, to take possession of the boat.
And suddenly, the project had a home.
The boat was transferred to Cultivating Currents for $1. The donor has asked to remain anonymous and stay behind the scenes.
When Travers asked how he wanted the gift acknowledged, his response was simple:
“I would prefer to stay behind the scenes. It is your boat to enjoy. There is joy in the journey.”
There is another bit of history that makes the donation particularly fitting. ME VA was originally purchased with the intention of doing the Great Loop. That journey didn’t happen then. Now, she has another chance.
A yacht with a new job
ME VA isn’t being transformed into a research vessel by stripping away everything that makes her a boat. Quite the opposite.
She is still a 1985 Ocean Alexander, with teak that needs attention, windows that need resealing, decks that need painting, and a list of interior projects waiting their turn. But underneath it all are good bones: the engines are in good shape and start right up, and after several hectic weeks of moving, cleaning, troubleshooting, and settling in, ME VA is beginning to look like herself again.
ME VA recently made the short trip from Legacy Marina in Gulf Shores to Dog River Marina in Mobile, Alabama, where she’ll remain for the next two months while Cultivating Currents undertakes Phase 1: restoring teak, painting decks, resealing windows, making interior improvements, addressing safety and mechanical needs, and installing the equipment that will turn the vessel into a working research platform.
Dog River Marina has already become part of the story. Marina staff have helped Cultivating Currents get settled and upgraded the organization to a covered slip—a particularly welcome bit of generosity given the long hours the crew is spending aboard during an Alabama summer. “It is amazing how quickly a covered slip becomes a scientific necessity when you’re working on a boat in this heat,” Travers said.
The science is already aboard
The Living Loop Lab is not simply an educational cruise. ME VA will serve as the mobile research platform for the expedition, carrying scientific equipment, collecting observations and data along the route, and providing a base from which Cultivating Currents can connect with conservation and science partners in the communities it visits.
The project studies the relationships among agricultural land use, nutrient runoff, rivers, estuaries, and harmful algal blooms. Along the route, the team combines field observations, citizen science, geographic information systems, historical datasets, and community knowledge.
Cultivating Currents is partnering with NOAA’s Phytoplankton Monitoring Network (PMN), based in Charleston, South Carolina, which is celebrating 25 years of citizen science in 2026 and is foundational to the Living Loop Lab’s work. NOAA PMN has already supplied a VELAB VE-300PAD digital microscope with an integrated tablet, along with two water-testing kits—a meaningful investment in the project’s research capacity that will let the team examine and document microscopic life encountered along the route.
Cultivating Currents is also working with the NOAA Marine Debris Program, which provided funding through a 2026 award in partnership with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation for marine debris shoreline monitoring kits for the project’s ambassadors. Because ME VA has limited storage capacity, those kits will be delivered to the expedition at designated points along the route rather than carried aboard for the entire journey.
Together, the two NOAA programs give the Living Loop Lab an opportunity to do more than collect its own data. The project aims to expand participation in established citizen-science networks, developing 29 NOAA PMN ambassadors and 29 marine-debris ambassadors: two complementary pathways for young people and community members to contribute to real environmental monitoring.
Current partners and collaborators include NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, NOAA Marine Debris Program, the Eckerd College Marine Science Program, VELA, Miles4theMinds, EnrollEdge Marketing, and UF IFAS Extension/Florida Sea Grant (Martin & St. Lucie Counties), with more developing as the route takes shape.
The communities are the curriculum
While ME VA carries the research, the heart of the educational experience happens in the communities the expedition visits. Cultivating Currents is building relationships with conservation organizations, marine-science programs, educators, and community groups along the Loop, aiming to arrive with meaningful science already underway and connect that work to the young people, communities, and conservation partners already active on shore.
Rather than a traveling field trip, the Living Loop Lab is designed as a moving research platform that links one learning community to the next. At selected points along the journey, Cultivating Currents plans to bring students into the expedition more directly: periodically, one Cultivating Currents ambassador and one college student completing a field-research requirement travel aboard together for a portion of the route, working alongside one another and the communities and scientists they encounter.
It’s a small-scale model by design. “The goal isn’t to fill the boat with students,” Travers said. “It’s to create meaningful opportunities for young people to participate in real science, interact across generations, and carry what they learn back into their own communities.” Additional youth research experiences may develop as the project moves forward, depending on vessel operations, captain requirements, insurance, and safety considerations.
From Mobile to the Loop
Cultivating Currents is targeting a late November launch from the Mobile Bay area, with some educational, conservation, and resiliency events being planned in the interim. Partners and pop-up science events along the route are still being developed, and Travers is actively seeking Gulf Coast communities interested in hosting the expedition’s first legs and beyond.
Cultivating Currents welcomes support at every stage of the journey—sponsors, equipment and marine-supply donors, skilled volunteers, dockage, and transportation help to keep the boat moving, along with media partners, educators, scientists, and youth-serving organizations willing to open doors in their communities along the route.
“The boat is here. The route is planned. The science is underway,” Travers said. “Now we’re building the network of communities, partners, and people who will bring the journey to life and create the real impact.”
And that’s where Mobile comes in.
For the next two months, ME VA will be sitting on Dog River while educators, scientists, boat people, community partners and volunteers figure out how to turn an aging Ocean Alexander into something rather unusual:
A research platform that moves. A bridge between conservation communities. And, an opportunity for young people to step into real science.
The boat gets us there. The people and the science make the journey matter.
About Cultivating Currents
Cultivating Currents is a Laramie, Wyoming-based nonprofit environmental and educational initiative focused on connecting young people with hands-on science at the intersection of land, water and community resilience. Through the Living Loop Lab, citizen science, Street Science and community partnerships, Cultivating Currents creates opportunities for young people to participate in real-world environmental exploration and data collection.
Media and partnership inquiries:
Cultivating Currents
Director@cultivatingcurrents.org
cultivatingcurrents.org