Over 760 middle- and high-school classrooms around the globe -- representing nearly 53,000 students -- are participating in "Extreme 2004: Exploring the Deep Frontier." Click on each state or country button to access a list of its participating schools. This year, we invited classrooms to develop a Web page about their school to introduce everyone to their area of the world. Look for it after each school's name.

Extreme 2004 is engaging students in marine science through a standards-based printed resource guide, curricula, and evaluations, a documentary video by PBS station WHYY-TV, and this interactive Web site, where news is relayed from sea to shore during the 21-day expedition.

Among this year's highlights, students can "Write the Scientists," design an "Extreme Experiment," and submit their work to the "Virtual Science Fair." Forty-eight classrooms also will participate in "The Phone Call to the Deep," a live conference call with the scientists as they work in the submersible Alvin at hydrothermal vent sites.

The shipboard education coordinators working with Dr. Craig Cary, Chief Scientist, are Michael League, a graduate student at the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies, and author Karen Romano Young. Each day, they will relay news to the University of Delaware Marine Public Education Office, which is coordinating the Extreme 2004 program.

Extreme 2004 is presented by the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies, with primary support from the National Science Foundation. Additional support is provided by NOAA Sea Grant, WHYY-TV, and the University of Waikato in New Zealand.