Norwich Free Academy and New London High School are separated by 13 miles and a few towns, but the Thames River, and a trip to Project Oceanology in Groton to learn about it, brought them together on a chilly Thursday in March.

NFA science teacher Seth Yarish, a former Project O instructor himself, gathered more than 30 students from the two schools into a lab on the UConn Avery Point campus. As students located their homes on paper copies of a map of eastern Connecticut and traced out the rivers and streams that zig-zag across the region, he drew a lumpy hot air balloon shape around the map projected on the whiteboard.

“All of this area inside there is what we call a watershed, and if it rains inside any of this area, all of that water could possibly end up in the same place,” he said, pointing to the Thames River and Long Island Sound. “If you look at the dots on your paper, you can see we live pretty far apart… but we’re all connected by what we call the watershed.”

Yarish’s class is one of many that participates in Project O’s programs every year. It started in 1972 with one small building and one boat and has expanded to a 22,000-square-foot research facility with two fully-stocked research boats and several skiffs.

“You see different programs and you see the students of all ages just get excited about whatever it is they’re doing,” Jim McCauley, executive director of Project O, said. “Whether it’s pulling up the trawl from behind the EnviroLab (research boat) or whether it’s up on the Poquonnock River taking bottom samples out of the skiff, they’re just having fun.”

Chris Dodge, a marine science educator with Project O, said there was a need for schools to have access to Long Island Sound, and area schools banded together to create an interdistrict community for area students to learn about the marine environments in their back yards.

“The goal is to try to provide as many students with direct access to Long Island Sound and hands-on marine science as possible,” he said. “[Teachers] realized what an incredible teaching utensil Long Island Sound could be, and they didn’t have access to it.”

About two dozen member and subscriber schools participate in multiple programs a year with Project O, and more than 100 districts do a single program.

Yarish said NFA has been a member school for the last five years and on and off since Project O started. New London High School science teacher Josh Fish is a former student of his, so he invited Fish and one of his classes to experience the program with his own students.

“I think it was a wonderful experience for the two schools to collaborate with a joint field trip,” Fish said in an email. “It really gets these kids thinking about the relationship between these two areas that may not have been obvious to them before.”

Both teachers said the trip also got kids working together who might not have interacted otherwise. The class included not only two districts but urban and rural students as well as special education, honors and English Language Learner students.

Most Project O programs are school focused: many take place in the labs and boats at Avery Point, while others are brought to the schools. After the watershed lesson, the NFA and New London students sat through a quick presentation about seals with marine science teacher Danielle Banko to prepare for their trip on one of the EnviroLab boats to study the seals on the rocks off the coast of Fishers Island.

In addition to school trips, Project O stocks the marine animal tanks for the Connecticut Science Center and runs summer camps for students, including a Connecticut River camp for students in districts within the river’s watershed. Dodge said he enjoys programs that come out of state grants because they reach kids who wouldn’t be able to experience Project O otherwise. He cited an eagle watching trip on the Connecticut River for kids in the Hartford area that was partly funded by a state education grant.

Project O also hosts several seal-watching trips in the spring for the public. Tours are held Saturdays and Sundays through the end of April except for Easter weekend. For times and to register, visit oceanology.org.

a.hutchinson@theday.com