Santa Monica High Tops Regional Ocean Sciences Bowl

The final match at the 13th annual Los Angeles "Surf Bowl" academic competition at the University of Southern California on Saturday, March 3, was a case of déjà vu for the participants and the spectators who watched last year's finals.  

With nearly 200 students, teachers and parents on hand, Santa Monica High School emerged victorious for the second year in a row, beating out longtime rival Arcadia High School in an intense final round of ocean sciences trivia.

The annual Surf Bowl is based on the ocean sciences and is focused on five main disciplines: biology, physics, chemistry, geology and math.

The Santa Monica High School team will now take an all-expense-paid trip to Baltimore, Md., to compete in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, April 19 through April 22. About 2,000 students from more than 300 high schools nationwide participate in this academic competition. The theme for this year's competition is "A Sea of Change: Development and Evolution."

The competition was developed to foster the next generation of marine scientists, researchers and environmental advocates. The National Ocean Sciences Bowl is a program of the nonprofit Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education, based in Washington, D.C. USC's Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., co-host the academic competition. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, visit: http://www.nosb.org .