Two of my days at the Aquarium were spent with the Animal Health Department and the Turtle Rehab Facility in Quincy. Both of these departments focused on the medical and veterinary aspects of animal care. During my time with the Animal Health Department, I assisted with the examination of four large anacondas. As part of…
During the heart of my time at the Aquarium, I spent one day each in some very distinct galleries. I first worked with the Penguins Department, responsible for the husbandry of the Rockhopper, African, and Little Blue penguins. In this gallery, I helped feed the birds after preparing their breakfast and lunch of silversides and…
I kicked off my time at the New England Aquarium (NEAq) by spending a day with my host, Dan Dolan, in the Dive department, which manages the Aquarium’s iconic Giant Ocean Tank. Working with Dan was tons of fun, and the Saturday volunteers and staff with whom I worked were truly a charismatic group of…
I recently visited Undersea Divers in Beverly, MA to get fitted for lots of new dive gear that I am excited to use during my internship! My new, Henderson 7 mm wetsuit fits like a glove — and so do my new gloves! I love my Aqua Lung fins which have a spring-loaded strap, making them very easy…
While in Newfoundland, I had the extraordinary opportunity to join a National Geographic expedition documenting the migration of icebergs into Canadian waters. These massive ice formations, calved from Greenland’s glaciers, are carried south by the powerful Labrador Current. Witnessing this phenomenon firsthand was both humbling and deeply sobering. Yet, what captivated me most wasn’t the…
On a moonless night in 1942, four British carriers — the Saganaga, Lord Strathcona, Rose Castle, and PLM 27 — succumbed to a German U-boat attack, while transporting iron ore in support of the war effort. Today, these wrecks lie in close proximity on the ocean floor, spanning depths ranging from 70 to 160 feet….
I spent the last week in Woods Hole in Cape Cod. I stayed with Peter and Maria Symasko and was hosted at the Marine Biological Laboratory by Dr. Roger Hanlon. On Monday, Dr. Hanlon showed me around Woods Hole, and some of the different buildings. He introduced me to many of the researchers in his…
The New England Aquarium is departmentalized, and each department runs separately, and has a separate staff of co-ops, interns, and volunteers. The best thing about working at the aquarium was getting to work with so many different, passionate people. As part of my internship, I got to bounce around and spend a day or two…
I just got back from a great week in Connecticut with Rick Simon and his wife Erin. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side, and it rained for most of my trip, so we did not do a lot of diving, but we did have a great dive in Ft. Wetherill. I tried out…
I went up to Undersea Divers in Beverly to meet Bobby Boyle. He is a strong supporter of the internship program, and Sea Rover’s Diver of the year in 2013! Bobby donates gear every year to the intern. Bobby generously donated a wetsuit, BC, regulator, computer, tank, hood, and gloves this year.
I went to the DUI Demo day at Stage Fort Park on May 10th. It was a day I’ll never forget. I got to test out my new DUI drysuit. I went diving with Vin Malkowski. We did some mask clears, air sharing, reg retrievals, and I got the feel of my new drysuit. I…
The coast of North Carolina is a ship graveyard, and the sea is filled with beautiful shipwrecks and warm, semi-tropical water. East Coast Divers sponsered me to go, and it was the most amazing diving I have ever done. We drove down to North Carolina and then dove for the next three days. Prior to…
I went to visit Mike and Fred at Backscatter in New Hampshire. They showed me how to set up the camera systems used by the Sea Rovers Intern. There is a GoPro system and a still camera set up for me to use during my summer as the intern. Fred also showed me how to…
I flew in from England on Thursday night before the weekend of the Sea Rovers Conference. I got up early for the COMS (Career Opportunities in Marine Science) day. I really enjoyed the broad variety of speakers at this event. I was always interested in marine biology as a child, and the school groups that…
The last two days of my great lakes trip was a lot of fun. I had an early flight out the next day, so we got up early the day before to make two dives. The first dive was on a tug, the Mary Alice. It is a beautifully preserved wooden vessel in about 85ft…
We got blown out of diving the middle two days of my trip. I went out a few times to run errands with Jim and Pat, but spent the vast majority of my time editing video… which was a necessary evil I suppose. But I do not have much to report from it unfortunately… It…
At 3am the morning after diving in the GOT I began traveling to the Great Lakes to do some video work with Pat and Jim Staire. So I arrived in Detroit at about noon. Once my baggage was all set we headed to 5 Guys for a quick lunch and then back to the Stayer’s…
For my last day at the aquarium I got to spend my time with the dive team, who are largely responsible for feeding and watching the health of all 2000 critters in the GOT! My day started with food prep. There is always a lot of food to be prepped. Once we got all set…
The next morning I headed to Quincy to the NEAQ’s rescue and rehab facility. I began the day staring at a large warehouse with no idea where to go in, luckily I found the right door and entered an immense building full of tanks. Once things got started we began our day on food prep….
My first two days spent at the New England Aquarium I got to work with the penguins and go collect specimens in the field! The first day was with the penguins. I arrived at the aquarium around 8 and got started right away on food prep. Most penguins that day were getting fed sardines…
Alrighty, I am not the best blogger in the world (gasp), so I am going to finish up Newfoundland by just going through some different categories. I’ll try to cover everything: the lodge and accommodations, the diving, the snorkeling with whales, and other little tidbits here and there. Let me…
Day two began with a trip out on Ocean Quest’s 45 foot, brand new dive boat, The Mermaid. It is a beautiful 45 passenger vessel with an elevator to assist divers out of the water! My job that morning was just to help divers in any way I could (surface support), and in doing so I…
I arrived in Newfoundland early Monday morning, after a slight delay at immigrations in Saint John’s. I will be here for 2 weeksworking with Ocean Quest’s resorts, basically doing whatever they tell me to… hopefully they me tell me to do a little diving:) The first night I slept at…
I leisurely headed into Harvard to meet with George Buckley and spend the day there. George Buckley is a Sea Rover and Harvard professor focusing in environmentalism and oceanography. He also helped begin online (distane) learning programs, being one of the pioneers for Harvards first online learning program. Our day…
I drove up to Derry New Hampshire to pick up the interns camera and accessories. When I arrived at Underwater Phototec I got to play with all the new toys! I have a small amount of experience with video cameras as I filmed youth football games, but other than turning it on and messing with…
On Monday I met Vin in Quincy at 8am to assist him with some private work he was doing for Batelle. Batelle is a large, private engineering company who, in this case, was working for NOAA doing buoy maintenance. The specific buoy we worked on can actual be found here! Basically our job was to dive on an…
I had the opportunity to do a day of fun diving with Ricky on Saturday July 6th. We met at Cape Ann Divers in Gloucester at 7am and headed out on the water shortly thereafter. Our first dive was on the Chester Polling. The polling is a beautiful wreck whose deck sits in about 80-90ft…
The final days of the sub races went a little bit smoother (a little smoke, but no fire). All the paperwork was mostly taken care of, and the teams got a lot more races in. Omer 8 set a world record for a single person, propeller driven sub, they went over 7 knots while underwater!…
So after a few days off for college orientation, I headed down to Marion to meet with Vin again on Friday June 21st. I met his friend and coworker, Neil, at his house. From Vin’s house we headed to Rodger Williams University, to pick up his daughter, Amy. So basically we left Vin’s house…
Thursday Ricky crewed a trip on the Canned Air (the boat he’s been crewing for since he was a teenager), so basically he was responsible for tying into the wreck and untying. Basically, Brown University hired the charter through various grant sources and a few scientists were able to do some graduate research work. They…
The following day, Monday, I arrived at Ricky’s shop at 9:30 (half an hour late—thanks dad for taking my car to the shop before I woke up!) We did several things in the shop, he taught me how to rig a backplate and harness, assemble reels, and learned to tie a few new knots. Also…
This experience consisted of working with Rick Simons of Manta Industries/High Seas Millwork for a week. Ricky owns and operates a dive equipment manufacturing company, making reels, backplates, harnesses, etc. He is also a highly qualified instructor, ranging from open water to advanced rebreathers. Ricky was also the Sea Rover’s intern a few years ago, you…
So my summer has begun! My first real experience for the internship is spending three days at Undersea Divers learning to fill tanks and generally how a dive shop works. Undersea Divers is basically a dive shop in Beverly MA that offers tank fills, gear maintenance and all sorts of training. The shop is run by Bobby…
Thanks to these awesome people at DUI, I was able to attend the DUI Demo in the drysuit they donated to me for the internship! The demo day was an awesome event where everyone was able to try out new suits to see what worked, and what didn’t. I spent the day diving with Vin…
Two weeks after the Sea Rovers expo I was heading to the Beneath the Sea expo in New Jersey. Beneath the sea is pretty much like the Sea Rovers expo… except about 5 times bigger of an expo! This time I stayed with Ricky Simon (previous intern whose blog you can find here) and his…
Following COMS we headed to Danvers for the 2013 Sea Rovers Expo. Friday was a party where I met a ton of presenters and rovers, including the past interns. This was my first real experience meeting a lot of the rovers and it was very exciting! I met and talked to a lot of professionals…
So where to begin? I guess I’ll start the second week of March, the beginning of the Sea Rovers annual expo show . Shortly after the infamous blizzard Nemo, Forecasts were calling for a little snow for Friday… well because it’s New England by Thursday night the little bit of snow quickly changed and…
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…