Aug 9-10th The last few days of my internship this summer have been spent in Massachusetts working with Eric Takakjian and NOAA. Eric owns his own business, Quest Marine Services, which does everything form oceanographic surveying to building unique equipment. I learned this part first hand when I helped Eric with his project to build…
8-5-11 DIVE DAY! It’s my last dive day in Newfoundland, and I’m psyched!! Now that I am officially an advanced diver, I get to dive on the Rose Castle, the deepest of all the Bell Island wrecks! Her decks rest around 90-100ft down, and her hull sits at about 150ft. Descending down the rope I…
8-4-11 We took today off from diving to give ourselves a bit of a break. So, Jason and Kate took me with them on a hike they were leading, then Rick took me, Tim, Margie, and Naoko to the Newfoundland museum, The Rooms! It was great! The Newfoundland coast is absolutely breathtaking. I could hike…
8-3-11 Today is Saganaga day! My second Bell Island shipwreck! Today we are doing my official drysuit dive, and this time I got to use my Gates video camera! When we went down the visibility wasn’t the best, but that had its perks; the anemones were out in full! They must have thought it was…
8-2-11 Holly is in the process of certifying Jaime and I as advanced divers! So, today we went out on the Ocean Quest dive boat to get in three of our dives! We did our boat dive, deep dive, and wreck dive! It was my first ever wreck dive, and it was amazing. We dove…
8-1-11 Today Rick Stanley took me, Chantelle, Bridget, and Margie out to go snorkeling with Humpback whales!! We even had our very own photographer/video-maker; Cecil! Both Chantelle and Cecil work for Rick at Ocean Quest, and I gotta say..they have some preeeettty sweet jobs! Bridget is a family friend, and Margie is a journalist who…
7-31-11 I jumped off a dock, a solid 12, maybe 15feet in height today. Into the ocean. In Newfoundland. In full dive gear. Talk about a RUSH! Now, why the heck did I muster up the courage to jump? Maybe it was because Holly and Jaime wanted scallops for dinner? Uhhhm.. no. Did I mention…
7-30-11 Wow, I certainly got some exercise today! In the morning I helped out at Ocean Quest with Jason’s open-water class in the on-site training pool. All of the students were really excited to learn. Then, after class was over, I continued my day by going hiking along the coast with Jason and his fiancée,…
7-29-11 I arrived in St. John’s Newfoundland today at 12:30am, accompanied by rain, thunder, lightning, turbulence, and screaming children…thankfully a friendly face and a warm greeting were waiting for me. I quickly signaled out Albert, with his sign in the crowd, and off we went to Ocean Quest and the start of my adventure! The…
7/21/11 & 7/22/11 Wow. The past two days have been an absolute whirlwind of information. It started yesterday morning when I spent some time with Jeff Wilkins learning about how Google Alerts work, and how they help with dive fatality research. DAN tries to keep a record on file of every dive fatality that occurs,…
7-20-11 I worked with DAN’s Medical Department today, where I got to learn how emergency calls are handled. Every morning the team holds a recap meeting where they go over any unresolved calls from the previous day, and any calls that the “on-call” night person received. All of the cases, both opened and closed are…
7-19-11 I worked with the research department at DAN today with Dr. Neil Pollock and his two interns, Jenna and Stephanie. I learned about some of the different projects they are researching for and working on, and the procedures that they use for gathering their data. Some of their projects include the flying after diving…
7-18-11 Four a.m. flights are most definitely not anyone’s first travel choice, but I was psyched to get on my plane. Destination: Divers Alert Network, North Carolina. My host, Patty Seery, picked me up a few hours later, and we finished the commute to the DAN office! Patty gave me a quick run-down on the…
7-16-11 *SCREECH* Hold your horses! We’re not going to NC just yet! Turns out I get to have one more New England Aquarium day! Just, with a bit of a twist..I don’t have to leave Duxbury! Apparently the NEA has a holding tank in Duxbury! It’s mainly used as a porpoise recovery rescue tank, but…
7-15-11 Ok, so my day today was something out of a fantasy book! I started the day off working with the penguins and today’s interns and volunteers. As many people might know the last movie in the Harry Potter series came out today (i.e. at midnight), and, in honor of that we all assigned ourselves…
7-14-11 Ahh! So much to do, so little time! I really got a good sense of the New England Aquarium today while working with the Visitor Education Department. My host for the day, Dave, introduced me to a ton of the volunteers and interns, gave me a schedule that had me moving around about every…
7-13-11 Yesterday at the New England Aquarium I spent my day around the base of the Giant Ocean Tank(GOT) in the penguin exhibit. Today I climbed a few flights of stairs and spent my day working in and around the Giant Ocean Tank ! Normally everyone helps prepare all the food in the morning, then…
7-12-11 Let me start by admitting that I have never been to the New England Aquarium before. So, when I showed up and met Paul Leonard at the front desk, I wasn’t really sure what I was in for. Turns out I was going to get a better first look at the aquarium than most…
July 7th -8th I think I’ve spent the last couple days at Harvard’s Natural Museum of History in just about every department that they have! Now I really understand what people mean when they say that when you go to a museum, you are only ever seeing about 10% of what is actually there. Museums…
July 5th -6th Ahh!! SO cool! This week was my first time riding trains on my own! And, where was I headed? Even Better: TO HARVARD! I’ve always wanted to visit, and this week I am working with some of the wonderful people at the Harvard Museum of Natural History! (If you haven’t had a…
7/01/11 It’s the last day of the races here at the 11th International Submarine Races! Soo, it promised to be an fun-filled and interesting day! After we finished launching all the subs, Neil, Kim, and I got treated to a tour of the basement! (And you’re thinking…”uhm..yay?”) BUT, what most people don’t know is, underneath…
6/28 – 6/29 AAH!! Cameras, cameras, and more cameras!! Oh..and submarines..Lottttssss of submarines! The past couple of days I spent the majority of my time in the water helping Nick Caloyianis take pictures and film the submarine races. Nick is one of the associates of the Boston Sea Rovers, and has worked with the Discovery…
6/26 & 6/27 I’m spending this week in Maryland at the 11th International (human-powered) Submarine Races (ISR). The races are held on the Caderock Naval Base in the David Taylor Model Basin, which is basically a pool, half a mile long, 50 feet wide, and 20 feet deep. It’s incredible! It’s so long, they had…
7/04/11 Hi everyone! I’m back from Maryland where I just attended the 11th human-powered International Submarine Races and the David Taylor Model Basin on the Caderock Naval Base. We had something akin to 24 differnt teams, and 28 submarines from all corners of the globe. I worked as dive staff with Vin Malkoski, Roberta Flanders,…
6/22 -6/24 I spent the last three days working at Bobby Boyle’s dive shop, Undersea Divers, in Beverly, MA. Bobby is the person that donated all of my Aqualung gear, so I was really happy that I would be able to help-out at the shop. I did a bunch of different jobs, including inventory, folding…
6/21/11 “Ghost Gear Project,” what does that make you think of? It made me think of people buying gear to make themselves look like ghosts….riiiiight..cause THAT happens in the middle of June. (I obviously had the WRONG idea). Today I met Vin Malkoski, along with Derrick, Steve, and Mike, at the Sandwich Marina in the…
6/20/11 Well, today I actually headed north instead of south! My destination? New Hampshire and Backscatter East, where I was meeting with Fred Dion to pick-up the cameras and their underwater housings that have been donated to the internship! I was pretty excited to “meet” the video camera that John Ellerbrock and Gates donated. All…
6/15/11 Another bright and early day, but that was fine with me! Today I got to do all of my cavern dives! Steve, our instructor, and I met at Blue Spring (my favorite spring that we worked at with the Cambrian Foundation). Once we got there we walked around and did a site check, then…
6/14/11 I’m still in Florida, and today was the first day of my cavern course! Steve Dunn, one of the Cambrian Foundation Interns was also taking the class, making a grand total of two students. It was actually really nice to just have two people in the class, it made it feel more like a…
6/13/11 Today we had a minimal team consisting of Rima, Amber, and Aaron from Virginia Commonwealth University, Steve Dunn, one of the Cambrian Foundation Interns, Renee Power, one of the divers, and myself. Our goal for the day was to travel to three non-divable springs in Central Florida and take some grab-samples of bacteria and…
June 10-13, 2011 WOW. I’ve spent the past few days in central Florida working with the Cambrian Foundation, which is a not for profit organization full of really diverse, and fun individuals. They’ve got their hands into everything from deep sea and cave microbe research, to giving educational presentations at schools, and exploring and mapping…
6/07/11 Today we changed it up! I met Ricky and Anthony at Fort Wetherill State Park in Jamestown, RHODE ISLAND! I had a LOT of firsts today. It was my first time in Rhode Island, my first ocean dive of the internship, and my first dive in New England! The park and ocean were beautiful,…
6/06/11 One more time! Connecticut: Part…5? I started the day at Ricky’s shop, helping Anthony assemble 100 junior reels. If nothing else, I’ve got the bowline knot down for the rest of my life! Once we finished, it was time for lunch, and then all three of us headed back to Bigelow Hollow State Park…
6/05/11 I’m beginning to think that I should just move to Connecticut! Today I met Ricky at Brownstone Quarry for another day of diving. Brownstone also doubles as a huge water park type attraction, with zip-lining, bouncy bounces (in the water) kayaking, and a whole ton of other fun stuff. But, set off to the…
6/04/11 And back to Connecticut we go! Today was more of a “for fun” trip. I headed back to Diver’s Cove for their 30th Anniversary Event. It was kind of like a big open house. There was food, a couple booths, and a bunch of people. Rick had a booth set up for Manta Industries,…
6/03/11 Today I headed off to Connecticut once again. But, this time I was off to meet with Rick Simon, one of the previous Scalli Interns (2005). He is now the owner of Manta Industries and Highseas Millwork (Privateer Divers LLC), and is an extremely accomplished diver on the side. When I got there he…
6/01/11 Today I drove down to Essex, Ct. to meet Captain Lee Livingston at Diver’s Cove. Lee is a good friend of the Sea Rovers, and was a huge help to me. He spent the better part of four hours refreshing all of the concepts and math, or Dive Theory, that I had learned in…
5-29-11 SCHOOL IS OUT! I just got back home from my Marine Ecology course in Costa Rica, which means that it is OFFICIALLY summer. Annd, that means it is time to start my adventures as the Boston Sea Rovers’ 2011 Frank Scalli Intern! Today I drove over to Undersea Divers in Beverly, MA to meet…
3-26-11 There’s nothing like a trip to a dive show to cure a little cabin fever! This Friday I drove down from Unity College (Maine) to Vin Malkoski’s house in Massachusetts. Saturday we headed out, along with Vin’s wife, Dee, and Holly Bourbon, bright and early to New Jersey. Our destination? The 35th Anniversary Beneath…
March 5th & 6th 2011 WOW. My head is reeling from the past two days. It’s been a non-stop whirlwind of introductions, generosity, and amazing people. This year the Boston Sea Rover Clinic is being held at the Crowne Plaza Boston North Shore hotel in Danvers, MA. This is the first time the Clinic has…
3-4-11 COMS My first time driving in Boston, I had woken-up bright and early to make my way to the Boston Public Library in order to attend the Career Opportunities in the Marine Sciences Symposium (‘COMS’ for short). This was the first event I attended as the 2011 recipient of the Boston Sea Rovers’ Frank…
After seeing the film crew in action yesterday in the penguin exhibit, I was itching for a chance to use my own camera in the Aquarium. The opportunity came today when I headed back to the top floor to work once again with the dive staff in the Giant Ocean Tank. Don Stark–one of the…
The last trip of my internship was to the Great Lakes, more specifically Lake Huron for a week of wreck diving and video editing with Jim and Pat Stayer. Jim and Pat are founders of Out of the Blue Productions and have helped find a handful of wrecks in Lake Huron. The first couple of…
Today my family and I drove to Gloucester, MA to meet Patrick Scalli, past interns, and other Sea Rovers for a day of diving and a cookout. We dove from two boats in Folly’s Cove and caught some enormous lobster, most of which had to be returned because they were over the maximum size limit. …
Before I knew it I was flying to North Carolina to visit the Divers Alert Network (DAN) headquarters. When I arrived, I met with Eric Douglas and Donna Uguccioni from DAN. Donna is in charge of the scholars and interns that come to visit. Jamie Brisbin (2008 Our World Underwater Scholar) was also there to…
I was next off to Pennsylvania to take a Diver Rescue class at Dutch Springs taught by Andrea Zaferes and Lifeguard Systems. The class consisted of one night of classroom and then the weekend of diving at Dutch Springs, with a mix of lectures and dives. On land, we went over CPR, dressing different types…
Today I went to the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries office in New Bedford to take part in a great white shark necropsy being performed by Greg Skomal. The shark had washed up on shore a few days earlier and was picked up by the Division. The necropsy was being done to try and figure…
After my work on the Quest, I was off to Connecticut to meet up with past Frank Scalli Intern Richard Simon. I would be doing my Advanced and Nitrox class with him. The first night, we got all of the gear ready to go to Block Island and then did the majority of the classroom…
I woke up this morning with eager anticipation; I was finally going to dive in the New England Aquarium’s Giant Ocean Tank, fulfilling a dream I’d had ever since I’d interned at the Marine Mammals exhibit there. For those who’ve never been to the New England Aquarium, the Giant Ocean Tank (or GOT) is a…
My next location was Fairhaven Harbor; here I was on Eric and Lori Takakjian’s boat the Quest. The Quest was being used by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries to support a Focus II tow vehicle for using multi-beam sonar. The two days were spent putting everything onto the boat and securing it to the…