Normally, parents would never encourage their young children to hang out with drifters, but when parents find out that students are working with global drifters, their response may be "Oh, buoy!"

Starting next school year, kindergarten through 12th grade students will be able to follow the progress of about 150 drifting buoys set out in the Carribbean as part of an International Year of the Ocean project by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The buoys will send messages about the temperature of the sea, the strength of the wind, and the direction of the ocean currents to a NOAA satellite, which will transmit the data via computer to any student who wants to follow along on the Web.

Satellites monitor such data as water temperature and ocean currents to predict weather patterns, or where pollutants are likely to flow. The buoys play an important role because the satellites can be fooled by dust plumes from the desert and they need the data from the buoys to confirm their data and to recalibrate satellite equipment.