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A team of Dublin High School students recently invented a sea urchin-capturing submarine in attempts to help protect kelp forests threatened by the purple critter.
Dubbed the Aqua Sentinels, the group of five seniors garnered international attention for their submarine prototype last year by placing among the winners of an innovation competition hosted by the United Nations.
The project’s contributing members include team lead Premang Jha, mechanical engineer lead Adhi Jeyappragash, marketing and communications lead Suraj Kudrikar, coding lead Saif Jeelani and mechanical engineer Shikhar Jayswal.
“All of us are highly outdoorsy people and we love being active … the members are also all committed to leaving an impact on the world, to leave the world better than when we had found it,” Kudrikar told the Pleasanton Weekly via email interview. “We knew we had a responsibility to put our skills to good use.”
Since 2014, the population of purple sea urchins along the Pacific Coast has grown extensively, with some areas seeing an increase of up to 1,000%, according to the website of the Aquarium of the Pacific, a Long-Beach-based nonprofit organization that aims to steward the Pacific Ocean and its inhabitants.
Statewide, the purple sea urchin population has trended upward, but some areas such as California’s south coast have hosted a relatively stable population, the website states.
The increasing number of grazers threatens kelp forests upon which numerous marine species depend, according to the website. The impacts of overgrazing are exacerbated by marine heatwaves.
Kickstarting the Aqua Sentinels, Jha found a video on social media that showed a diver killing purple sea urchins.
One of the solutions to urchin overpopulation is manual culling, Kudrikar explained. During the process, divers use hammer-like tools to kill the urchins one by one.
“Our solution was to automate this task, using an AI model that could detect urchins and capture them, if not cull,” Kudrikar said.
Each member of the team contributed their skillset to the project whether it was coding, circuitry, communications, presentation or computer-aided design, he explained.
Jha gave the submarine eyes to detect urchins using AI; Jeelani tuned the navigation software; Jeyappragash and Jayswal helped materialize the machine. They also share Indian heritage, Kudrikar said, including North and South India.
Jayswal recently left the team for personal reasons.
Ahead of any sales, their invention was among the 2025 winners of the UN’s global citizens open innovation SDGs (sustainable development goals) challenge. This program invites individuals and groups to address the organization’s 17 initiatives including no poverty, no hunger, good health and wellbeing, quality education and in the case of the Aqua Sentinels, the conservation of “oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development,” the UN website states.
“Since winning the competition, we are continuing to refine the model and hope to test it in waters soon,” Kudrikar said.
In addition to international attention, the team was recognized among the champions of the 2025 entrepreneurship challenge at Dublin High.
The group also aims to eventually put the submarine on the market, but for now it remains a community project.
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