Despite the regular coming and going of members from year to year, the ConVal High School Ocean Bowl team seems incapable of losing.

For a group built on fact-finding, the hard facts are impressive:

• The emerging ConVal dynasty has been nationally ranked in 10 of the past 13 years.

• They’ve made frequent field trips to the Atlantic coast as well as annual voyages to places like Alaska and Florida for national competitions.

• Past members enjoy a superb record of college acceptance and high-level job placements.

Even with all this, nobody seems to know quite what the Ocean Bowl team is all about.

To set the record straight, it’s not a football game or a bowling team. But the ocean is directly involved.

The ConVal Ocean Bowl team was founded in 1998 under the mentorship of former ConVal teacher Jon Manley. The Consortium for Ocean Leadership, a group of prominent governmental and educational institutions, launched the National Ocean Science Bowl that year with the intent to nurture future generations of ocean scientists. Manley’s team got in on the ground floor, but quickly ascended to the top shelf.

ConVal’s team began as a low-stakes club before becoming the first national champion team of any kind in the school’s history. The club actually has between one and three five-member teams, depending on the number of participants. Some regional championships, which place ConVal against more than 20 teams from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, have ended with ConVal’s “A” team battling its “B” team in the finals.

“It’s a combination of rote memorization and conceptual ideas,” said junior and team captain Alice Hale, 17, of Hancock. “Questions can come at you from many angles. You really need to know the topics from all sides.”

Students answer questions designed and reviewed by professional scientists in a number of disciplines, including biology, chemistry, geography, geology, marine policy, physical oceanography, social sciences and technology.

One sample question: “Which international treaty was designed to manage the water quantity and quality of the Laurentian Great Lakes and other shared waters of the United States and Canada?”

The correct answer, of course, is the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. A sample short answer question asks students to graph the change in salinity, oxygen content, ammonia concentration and temperature in a marine aquarium left unattended for two weeks. The team has four minutes to produce the graphs.

The competition is rigidly structured with a complex set of answering protocols and scoring opportunities. A team will face a penalty, for instance, if it gets a question wrong after buzzing in before the moderator has finished reading the question. An appeals system sends in-game complaints to a pair of experienced officials who review the complaints and issue binding rulings.

“People with PhDs are in the audience scratching their heads wondering whether or not the kids’ answers are right,” said Manley, who said ConVal has developed a considerable reputation for its tendency to get things right. “All the ocean facilities along the coast know about the ConVal team. Ask any one of them.”

Students frequently visit such facilities to get a hands-on look at their potential future careers. Manley said one student has gone on to become an ocean science officer aboard the Henry Bigelow, a ship operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Another is working on a master’s degree while studying dyke and levy systems in Amsterdam.

When asked what sets the ConVal team apart, the school’s educational program, mentors, or inherent skill levels of members themselves, the current “A” team cited a natural camaraderie and a well-rounded team. When Ken Cloutier, team co-adviser since 2004 and lead adviser following Manley’s retirement, wasn’t listening, Manley was quick to cite his leadership as a key role in the team’s success.

“You can see how much enthusiasm he has for this and for the kids,” said Manley of Cloutier, under whose leadership the team has not lost a regional competition. “He does an impressive job with them, to say the least.”

Cloutier, on the other hand, was hesitant to take much credit.

“They make my job easy,” said Cloutier. “They understand the rules, they understand the strategy and they’re comfortable performing at that level. I don’t have to do much. They’re so self-motivated. They just watch all the Blue Planet specials they can get their hands on.”

“All of us are sort of obsessed,” said freshman Gwyn Welch, 15, of Hancock. At just five months on the team but with a regional championship already under her belt, Welch is the junior member. “You learn so much. I feel like I’ve taken a separate course.”

The conversation briefly switched to the viability of course credit being awarded to Ocean Bowl team members, a goal Manley said he had once unsuccessfully pursued.

The more immediate goal is the national competition, which takes place in St. Petersburg, Fla. on April 23-25.

“Florida, whoopee!” cheered the teens as they clapped their hands and jumped up and down. Moments later, immersed in a practice round with the team’s authentic buzzer system, they successfully gauged the impact of trans-delta salinities on upstream organisms.

The ConVal “A” Team consists of Mara Zrzavy, 16, Jacob MacKay, 15, Alice Hale, 17, and Ian MacKay, 15. The “B” Team consists of Michelle Gregory, 16, Tina Croft, 16, Owen Hale, 15, Jessica Notemyer, 14, and Jimmy Gombas, 14.