6 WEEKS OF OCEANS

By James O’Sullivan

To open this blog post, I just wanted to say the past 6 weeks at Sea Synergy have been very educational for me and I’m blessed to have received the opportunity to do this internship this summer. As someone coming from the world of terrestrial animals, coming here forced me out of my element. In order to succeed, I needed to do new things that made me uncomfortable at first like snorkelling and teaching kids about molluscs while I wasn’t the most knowledgeable on the topic! After some time to adapt and learn more, I feel strongly that I could talk more and teach better when it comes to marine creatures. There were quite a few memories made along the way such as measuring and sampling a beached minke whale, travelling to small schools with 20-30 kids in the middle of nowhere to spread marine awareness, and serving as an unconscious person for different water safety drills. 

With my background in farm and domestic animals, I hadn’t realised the difference between terrestrial and aquatic animals was bigger than I had initially anticipated, so slowly experiencing everything aquatic and learning more and more each day, really led to a fuller understanding and appreciation for the internship and the world around me. My time at Sea Synergy has been an unforgettable experience and I appreciate everyone that I have worked with over these past 5-6 weeks and I’m looking forward to what we can accomplish together moving forward.