You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes…

From the start, I knew I wanted an internship that would have me out in the field gathering data on whales. Preferably on the west coast of Canada, since I already had spent time studying the east coast marine ecology, and wanted to get a more balanced picture of what’s happening on both sides of my country. So I started looking at organizations and e-mailing people in early December, hoping to get something settled as soon as possible.  But, things don’t always work out as planned.

Even with my early start, up until May I didn’t have anything lined up for the summer.  Definitely not for lack of trying, because my nightly ritual for months consisted of getting home from school, making dinner, and sending out job applications and inquiries about summer opportunities.  Every. Single. Night.  But with the economy in rough shape, it seemed like funding was being cut to most of the marine mammal research organizations I looked into and nobody was hiring.

So, I switched tracks and began applying for grants and funding, hoping to be able to find enough money to just scrape by as a “volunteer” for one of these organizations.  But, being a Canadian student at an American school, looking for money to work in Canada over the summer, finding funding was no easy task.  As it turns out, I wasn’t eligible for most of the funds I applied for.  Which meant it was back to the drawing board for me, with the back-up plan of heading back home to Ottawa and just finding work there if all else failed.  As April drew to a close, that quickly became my only plan.  In anticipation of a summer at home, I started making plans with friends and family, and even adopted a puppy because I knew I would have time to spend training and socializing her (something I hadn’t had time for, up until then).

But at the end of April, after all my “plans” had been decided (except for the job in Ottawa, which I was working on), I heard that I received funding from the Duke University Center for Canadian Studies to research whales off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.  Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised.  With that in place, I quickly began contacting organizations I had talked to in earlier months about working with them on a volunteer basis for part of the summer, in order to gather data for my masters project.  And after a few hang-ups and glitches (which I won’t bore you with here), here I am on the west coast of Canada, hanging out in Johnstone Strait for a month, working with an organization called Straitwatch, a marine mammal monitoring and education organization that promotes the whale watching guidelines in the area.

In the last week and a half, I’ve spent days zipping around the strait in a zodiac, following humpback whales and killer whales and speaking to boaters about the guidelines.  I’ve spent a day in a kayak, paddling along the incredible Vancouver Island shoreline, speaking to other paddlers.  I’ve even spent a day out on a cliff-top, watching boater activity from far above. On Monday I start my own research, looking at past data and data that I will be collecting in Johnstone Strait West on whale and boat interactions.  I will be camping at a beautiful beachfront campsite for 2 weeks, hiking up to a cliff each morning where I’ll spend the day collecting data and enjoying the beautiful view.

Hopefully the data I gather in the short time I’m here will be enough for a decent project. But even if it’s not, and it’s back to the drawing board, at least persistence paid off.  I got what I needed: time at home spent with my family and friends (and my puppy), job experience, and a month I’ll never forget.