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…
During my time in Monterey, I had the opportunity to dive multiple times a day for many days in a row. Unfortunately, we could not dive from the beach due to a sea lion takeover (as pictured above); however, we ended up having wonderful boat dives. The extensive time in the water allowed me a…
For a few days in between the National Aquarium and the Monterey shootout, I had the pleasure to head down the coast to visit Ron Watkins for a photography workshop. I was so grateful to be able to fit this in and learn from another amazing photographer. His workshop was run a bit differently than…
Continuing my immersion in the aquarium world, I headed down to visit Holly Bourbon at the National Aquarium. Diving within the tanks allowed me lots of time to practice with the camera and give lots of fish sand baths. I made fast friends with a pork fish who would swim alongside me throughout the dives,…
New England Aquarium week! Thank you to Dan and Dawn Dolan for hosting me in Boston during my time at the New England Aquarium! I went to the Quincy rehabilitation and husbandry center with Dan on the first day, spending the first part of the day in the turtle rehabilitation center helping with feeding, exam…
Once I got home from the Arctic I settled in, did laundry and was off to see Jake Stout at Sunset Lake in New Hampshire. What a great few days! We started off by going through his photo class lecture which was invaluable to shaping the way I look at photography and included much more…
I stared into a microscope for many minutes watching plankton hop around. It was beautiful and mesmerizing, I could have stayed there for hours. Just days before the same thing happened as I watched the ctenophore’s rainbows go up and down their filter feeding mechanisms while diving off the coast of Svalbard. It was magical…
This week as I waited for my generously donated Otter dry suit I borrowed a suit from Vin Malkoski. While changing out the seals to fit I won the tiniest neck trophy! I am so honored to have gotten this valued trophy from Wayne at Divers Market. In all his 40 years of cutting neck…
With a wake up call of 6:30 on my first day with Kim Malkoski, I headed out to get trained in CPR and First aid. I am incredibly grateful to Kim for letting me join at the last minute! Before such taxing activities however, a French bakery breakfast was needed. After a wonderful fruit tart…
Wow! What a great first week with Rick Simon. Rick and his wife Erin graciously hosted me on their farm this week where I got to pet their donkey and horses while I practiced my dive planning math. While Rick threw hay and called out questions, I took my duty of scratching the donkey seriously…
Along with diving during my stay with Julie and Michel of Anticosti Ecotours, we also spent two days exploring the island itself! The first day was a more private tour with the three of us as well as Nick. We started the day by driving to the northern shore of the island. Anticosti has unique…
Diving in Anticosti was going to be exciting; even though most of my diving experience had been in New England waters, I had never been that far north. These northern waters meant it was time for some more practice in my drysuit! For my first dive with Julie and Michel, I got to tag along…
For one of my longest stints of travel during my internship, I got to spend 10 days exploring the Canadian Island of Anticosti! Anticosti is a large island occupying approximately 3,000 square miles in the gulf of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Although the island is quite large, it is populated by as few as 250…
For my last day at the aquarium, I got to take a look behind the scenes at how some of the many galleries in the New England Aquarium are run! I spent the day with Summer, the head aquarist for the tropical galleries, as well as her intern Nick. We spent the first part of…
Today was another special day at the Aquarium since I would get to dive in one of the most well known exhibits, the Giant Ocean Tank (GOT)! Before we got to that however, there was work to be done and things to see. I started off by observing and helping with the food prep for…
For my next day at the New England Aquarium, I was lucky enough to get to shadow the caretakers of the Penguin Exhibits! The aquarium is home to about 50 penguins, including a mix of African Penguins and Southern Rockhoppers, with each individual penguin being marked by a colored band in order to make them…
For an adventure closer to home, I got to spend time at the New England Aquarium! For my first day, I met up with Dan Dolan at the Aquarium’s Husbandry Facility! Dan has been a volunteer diver for the aquarium for many years, and for the past few years has been working at their offsite…
After completing an amazing week with Holly Bourbon at the National Aquarium, I got to head right into my next assignment. I got picked up from the aquarium and we started the journey to our new home for the week. After picking up another member of our crew from the airport, we arrived at our…
Sadly its my final day at the National Aquarium, luckily however I got to squeeze in some fun things in the time I had remaining. I started the day meeting some of the aquarium’s husbandry experts, giving them a hand preparing food for the animals in the Blacktip Reef. Because there are so many different…
We started today at a different location! Today I got to tour the National Aquarium’s Animal Care and Rescue Center (or the ACRC). The ACRC is a state of the art facility which is responsible for housing and treating any incoming animals, putting them through a quarantine process to ensure their health and that of…
For my third day, I got to see a much different perspective of working at the aquarium! To start the day I got to watch three of the assistant dive safety officers all work together to clean the Blacktip Reef using a pressure washer. It’s was super impressive to see how well the entire team…
Today was a super fun day checking out the other massive tank at the National Aquarium. Our day started nice and early so that the dive team could test some of the safety measures around the dive-able locations. One of the places we checked in on was the aquarium’s dolphin exhibit. I was so surprised…
For my first day at the Aquarium, I got to do two dives in their Atlantic Coral Reef tank! The tank is a large ring that allows guests to walk up and down within the tank, providing a super dynamic environment for guests, as well as a fun diving experience. For our first dive, Holly…
For my first adventure out of New England, I get to fly to Maryland and spend a week with Holly Bourbon at the National Aquarium! The national aquarium is a staple of Baltimore, and has been around since the early 1980’s! It runs as a nonprofit devoted to inspire conservation, diversity, and inclusion. Holly is…
Today I got to help out and observe how the MA Division of Marine Fisheries goes about sampling certain species of fish. I met with Vin Malkoski, and two other workers in order to launch the boat. The plan for the day was to pull up five fish traps throughout the bay, and take samples…
Today I got to work with Vin Malkoski, and the Division of Marine fisheries (DMF)! The DMF is a body of government which manages the states commercial and recreational fisheries, as well as other marine environments and communities. Vin is the Senior Biologist as well as the Dive Safety Officer for the DMF. I met…
To finish off an amazing week with Rick Simon, I got to join him and a number of experienced divers on a trip to the Grecian! The Grecian was a 263 ft long freighter that sank a few miles of the coast of Block Island in the 1930’s. The entire crew met at Ricks boat,…
Today, instead of meeting at Ricks Boat for a day of work, we met at his house to drive to a new site for the day. On the way Rick bought us a great snack to get us ready for the day ahead. Shoreline’s Job for the day was to find, free, and relocate an…