2025 Marine Interns Blog: Weeks 5 & 6

2025 Marine Interns Blog: Weeks 5 & 6

In our 5th and 6th week we both chose our projects for our internship and got out and about at Gibraltar Point to help the engagement team with their sea dipping event.

After two exciting weeks travelling to London and Scarborough, week 5 was back in the office, but still just as exciting. At the beginning of the week, we were given our potential internship projects. These form our main focus of work flowing through the internship. We both do a big joint project alongside a smaller independent project. This meant the rest of the week was filled with chats and research to help us decide what we wanted to pursue.

For our independent projects we have both chosen really cool topics. Ryan is pursuing a project looking into the social benefits of projects such as Wilder Humber and how this might transfer into natural capital. He’ll tell you more about this in the next blog after a few exciting activities he is doing. My independent project will be looking into the feasibility of different survey techniques used for the Pacific oyster (Magallana gigas) and how this could inform future Pacific oyster management practices in North Norfolk. Pacific oysters were introduced to the UK in the 1800’s and since then have been spreading rapidly around the coast and can negatively impact native biodiversity. I’m really excited to get started and see if I can make a meaningful impact into how we monitor and control their populations. 

For our joint project we’re looking into the feasibility and potential optimisation of rock in offshore wind farms. Rock is needed as scour protection (protection from currents) around the base of wind turbines, but it also can negatively impact the natural state of the site it is put into. This makes the project really interesting as we will have to navigate both sides of the argument and reach a middle ground that benefits all parties along with nature itself.

Both my projects are new areas for me and different to what I have researched in the past. It’s great to be sinking my teeth into something that’s new to me.

Josh and Ryan, marine interns, sea dipping

We started week 6 by finalising our project choices and began scoping our ideas. However, on Thursday we were back in the field and headed over to Gibraltar Point Nature Reserve to help the engagement team with their sea dipping event. Sea dipping involves pushing a push net through the sand at depths around knee height in the sea. This stirs up the sand which in turn collects any animals hiding in/on the sand into the net. We found some really cool animals including common starfish, shore crabs, shrimp, two unidentified fish, flatfish and jellyfish. We also had plenty of seals looking inquisitively over us as we sea dipped which was a really cool experience. This was one of my favourite internship events to date. Both the kids and parents got really involved and it was a great feeling getting them excited about our coastal and marine habitats.

Whale watching at North Sea Observatory

The weekend brought about the annual whale and dolphin watch for the Sea Watch Foundation. Every year around the UK during marine week (which actually spans two weeks), groups of people get together to survey their local coastline for cetaceans (whales and dolphins). We had the pleasure of conducting our survey at the North Sea Observatory at Chapel Point near Skegness. I’d never been here before, but it quickly became somewhere I’m going to visit again in my free time. On the first day we had an unprecedented amount of seal sightings throughout the day (about one every 15 minutes). This included seeing two groups of two and a group of three which is the first time it has been spotted at this location during the survey. Towards the end of the first day as we were becoming a little sea blind and losing hope, we spotted a harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena)! Harbour porpoise are small cetaceans reaching a maximum size of 2m. They are quite a shy species and can be bullied by seals. It was therefore no surprise that this sighting coincided with a drying up of our seal sightings. During the last two hours of the day four porpoise were spotted in total which is a great haul for the day. Sadly, on the Sunday, no porpoise were spotted although we spotted several seals and enjoyed some nice weather.  This was a great event, and I loved chatting to both the volunteers and public about cetaceans and their love of the marine environment.

The last two weeks have been really great combining our projects with some fun days out. We can’t believe we’re already a month and a half into the internship and are so excited for it to continue as it’s started.

Josh