Over the night we had sailed down to a bay called Midterhukhamna, south of Longyearbyen, and were gearing up for our first full day on the Ortelius. We spent the morning in our diving orientation, and once we had all been shown the helicarrier where we were to store our dive gear, it was time…
Late Friday afternoon, I stepped off a plane and breathed in Arctic air for the first time. I am currently in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, about halfway up the Arctic Circle in a Norwegian archipelago. Associate Sea Rover Faith Ortins runs the company BlueGreen Expeditions, and she has been extraordinarily generous in inviting me to join her…
At the end of my week at the New England Aquarium main campus, I drove down to meet Dan Dolan (friend of the Sea Rovers) and his wife Dawn at their home in Higham, MA. We went for a lovely dinner while we talked about my week and the experiences I had at the New…
When I showed up to the aquarium for my day shadowing the Animal Health Department, I didn’t go inside the building for an hour after I arrived. The harbor seal exhibit by the ticket booths outside the aquarium had been completely drained that morning, and the animal health team was inside with some of the…
On Sunday, I was with another staff member on their birthday, this time with penguin aquarist Mia Luzieti! Similar to the GOT, the first task of the morning for the Penguin team is food prep. The penguins’ food rotates through several different species of fish, and that day we were feeding them herring, anchovies, and…
On my first day back in Boston I was excited to continue my Aquarium experiences, this time with the New England Aquarium. Saturday morning, I met with Dan Dolan, a friend of the Sea Rovers, before the Aquarium opened. He and I walked through the aquarium and he introduced me to his fellow friend of…
On my fourth day, I spent the morning with the aquarists for the Atlantic Coral Reef (ACR) and Blacktip Reef (BTR) exhibits, as they prepped the food for that morning. I joined BTR aquarist Emily for the morning feed of the BTR animals. I got to walk out onto the walkway on the far side…
On Wednesday, Holly and I, along with two other DSOs, headed to the dolphin exhibit across the skybridge with our dive gear. There, we met the marine mammals team for the exhibit section of their extraction training. The dolphins had all been closed off in the training pools in the back section of the dolphin…
I had just gotten back from Newfoundland when I found myself on an early morning Amtrak down to Baltimore to meet Holly Bourbon, a friend of the Sea Rovers. Holly is the director of dive programs and a DSO at the National Aquarium, and she graciously invited me to stay with her for a week…
On Monday afternoon, after our dives at the Lord Strathcona and the Saganaga, I helped supervise a test-tank dive that a stunt team was doing in the OceanQuest pool. Netflix is currently filming a new limited series called The Sea Creature that’s set in Newfoundland, and they’ve been working with OceanQuest for all the boats…
When I heard earlier this summer that I would be staying with and diving with Sea Rover Rick Stanley, I couldn’t wait. Rick and his wife Debbie run OceanQuest Expeditions in Newfoundland, Canada, just out of St. John’s. And while I’d never dove in water that cold or that far north, I wasn’t worried after…
After a storm swept through New England, I got invited to join Rick Simon again to help salvage a mast that had broken off a sailboat in the storm. He and Shoreline Diving had been contracted to recover the mast and bring it in for parts. The harbor where the mast had broken off was…
After I got back from the Shootout, Sea Rovers Dave Caldwell and his wife Heather Knowles invited me to join their charter boat, the Gauntlet, to dive the famous Chester Poling wreck on the Fourth of July! I drove up to Beverly bright and early to meet Dave, Heather, and the rest of the folks…
The folks from Backscatter asked that I share a write-up/recap about my experience at the Shootout, and I figured I would also post it here. Enjoy! As the 2025 Boston Sea Rovers Summer Intern, I have the incredible opportunity to travel the world learning from world class professionals in all different fields of diving. When…
At the beginning of the Shootout, Sea Rover and wildlife cinematographer Cristian Dimitrius showed us a short film he had made last time the Shootout was held in Bonaire. It all started when he decided he wanted to try to get footage of the giant silvery tarpon that hunt off the house reef at night….
As the two interns invited to the Digital Shootout, both myself and Jemma Paradise (the Our World Underwater photography intern, who I became good friends with over those two weeks) each made a small film for the Shootout crew to show before the awards ceremony on the final day. Jemma focused on the tarpon we…
I recently had the incredible opportunity to attend Backscatter’s annual Digital Shootout in Bonaire! Every year, Backscatter hosts this two-week long underwater photography event, giving photographers and videographers a space to push their skills to the next level. Here, divers like me can learn from the best of the best in photo, video, and post-processing. The…
After my time in Beverly, I spent the second half of the week back in Woods Hole to join the NAUI Rescue course Sea Rover President Kim Malkoski was teaching at WHOI. Kim and her coworker Giorgio led lectures on the first day, and then on the second Kim and us four students dove off…
Sea Rover Dave Caldwell works at the Harborcenter in Beverly, Massachusetts, and graciously invited me to come in to work with him for a few days! I learned that on top of enforcing harbor regulations and managing boat traffic, Harbormasters respond to all kinds of emergencies on the water as well. Thankfully, both my days…
On Sunday June 8, I got up at sunrise to drive down to Connecticut. Rick Simon (a Sea Rover and former Intern!) had invited me to come wreck diving with him on his boat, the R/V Integrity. Rick and Eric Takakjian (also a Sea Rover) both captain the ship, and as we loaded our gear…
During my first week at WHOI with Kim, I had the opportunity to meet for an afternoon with Sea Rover Dr. Roger Hanlon at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. As someone who loves all things cephalopod, it was amazing to meet Dr. Hanlon and talk about his work studying cephalopod behavior! We talked…
My Internship has officially started! I spent the first several days in Cape Cod with Sea Rovers Vin and Kim Malkoski (the current BSR president!). Neither of them have seen me dive before, so we did several check-out dives to assess my buoyancy and to practice some skills. It’s been a while since I was…
Hello all! My name is Sofia Grabiel Butler, and I am incredibly excited and grateful to be the 2025 Boston Sea Rovers Intern! I’ll be posting on this blog to record my experiences and the people I meet this summer, but my hope is that it is also a window into what being the BSR Intern…