Notes

Hello everyone. Thanks for inviting me to speak to you about my experience of volunteering with sharks in Thailand. Like many students. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do when I finished school. I was going to maths and Sciences, but after a lot of thought went for geography for my bachelor's degree then for my second degree. I did an MSC in Marine Biology, but didn't know what to do next. Then I saw an advert for this program volunteering with sharks. So I made up my mind on impulse and applied as you can imagine.

In the advert had attracted hundreds of hopeful graduates. So the competition was incredibly tough. Anyway, I filled in the application form and was called to interviews and the rest as they say is history the idea of doing some voluntary work at been in the back of my mind for some time a cousin it been involved in a project in a rainforest and said the experience of been inspirational and although the sounded really cool ever since I was a boy. I had hoped I'd be able to spend some time on a tropical island working on a Interior project funnily enough when I was offered the job in Thailand working with sharks. I had second thoughts. My tutor was keen on me starting a PhD in the UK straight away and all my other friends seem to have found good jobs. It was my parents suggestion to go for it and them saying it was a golden opportunity. I'd be unlikely to get again that swayed me in the end. So finally I taken the plunge except at the job and there I was in Thailand and was doing my first dive I'd seen photos of the wonderful corals

Fish before but what I hadn't been prepared for was the visibility you can see everything really well on my first dive the team. I was working with just wanted to familiarize me with the environment and to make sure I was safe and knew what I was doing underwater. I on the other hand had another agenda. I was counting off in my head all the amazing marine life. I was seeing I'd hope to see a tiger shark but no luck though. I did get a glimpse of his ever shark just briefly then after my first Dive I had to get down to some real work. I was told that we were doing Marine surveys and this sounded quite straight forward until I started trying out some of the instruments. It was a lot trickier than I'd expected. All the information we collected was then fed through a software program. And we analyze the results later some of the team were involved in measuring the size of the Sharks. We found that my goal was to look into the distribution of different shark species in different places before going to Thailand. I'd read up on sharks and various scientific journals.

And knew about the problems they're facing. So I was aware of the work. The team was doing was important, but actually my concern is increased dramatically since seeing the data that we produced during my time in Thailand without a doubt more and more species of shark are being classified as vulnerable this knowledge and the experience I had has in fact strengthened my dedication and I want to carry out more research in this field. I'm hoping that further opportunities will arise in the not-too-distant future.

You're for me to do that. I've already decided to do a PhD on shark populations and I've identified which university I'd love to do it at and I'm sure the topic for my thesis would be acceptable. So the only thing that's holding me back is funding because without that at the moment it's out of the question.