Field Experience | Matthew Thurlow

Chief Scientist and Expedition Leader, Greenforce, Bahamas '13

As Expedition Leader I had final responsibility for all matters connected with the safety and well-being of the volunteers, field staff and official visitors to the expedition base camp. I supervised all diving activities carried out in connection with the project, ensuring they were conducted in a safe and professional manner.

The Expedition Leader had

responsibility for all equipment and

finances, especially:

Administration of first aid in the event of injury, whether caused by diving or not, and the arrangement of evacuation to hospital or recompression chamber if required.
The safe-keeping, handling, cleaning, inspection and maintenance of all diving equipment as far as he/she is able. Including regulators, gauges, BCDs, boats, outboards, air compressors and generators.
Maintaining expedition spending within the boundaries agreed with the Director of Operations.
Timely preparation and submission of expedition budget summaries for completed phases and expedition budget predictions for subsequent phases.

I combined this role with that of the

Chief scientist which was as stated

below which I found very useful for

getting things achieved for the project

but it came at a price of exhaustion

and a highly stressful working

environment.

Chief Scientist, Greenforce, Fiji '12

My role was to establish and/or maintain research objectives together with our Host Country Partners (HCP), and consistently review the progress with the project.

During phase time my main

responsiliblities were;

Scheduling of Research Objectives by phase.
Training and organising volunteers to carry out the research.
Building and maintaining good relationships with local NGOs.
Writing up of reports for submission to the HCP.

The reports should be of a frequency and content as directed by the HCP, normally quarterly and of a few pages in length and to be sent in to the Director of Operations in the UK.

I also made it a point to build and

maintain good working relationships

with the local park staff and community

representatives and find out what their

main needs were in terms of assistance

ie manpower or skilled training.

Science Officer, Coral Cay, Philippines '11

I was responsible for assisting the Project Scientist in the coordination and delivery of the scientific and community outreach programmes.

My responsibilities included assisting with the provision of on-going training to volunteers and locals in:

basic tropical ecology
species identification skills,
surveying techniques
assisting with the delivery of survey work

I was expected to facilitate local education efforts in any reasonable manner which will enhance the objectives of the project and compliment the surveying programme.

I worked with the project scientist to

co-ordinate field surveys to map habitats

and inventory the species encountered.

This included management and guidance

of the volunteers to meet the objectives

of the surveying programme.

I provided bi-weekly reports to the PS and UK Head Office staff summarising the progress of the training (if applicable) and the location of surveying conducted over the week, including any specific findings of importance.

Coral Colonisation surveys, Seychelles, Global Vision International '08

This was my first real volunteer expedition into some really basic living conditions with a large group of people I had never met before. I was sent to the island of Curieuse which had recently been set up and we were the first group of volunteers to experience this satellite camp.

We were stationed in safari style tents along side a small central building which housed the toilet and shower, supplied with water via a catchment tank on the roof. We had to be vigilant with food products and because of our outdoor living we stored everything securely in lockable cupboards off of the floor and

yet this still was not always enough.

Our only power came from a generator

for a few hours a night to aid in our

cooking on gas stoves and our only

water source was the catchment tank

on the roof. We learned to be very

sparing and responsible with our water

and food use as neither were readily available if they ran out.

Based on the beach we had access to the local reefs so we could learn and practice our identification skills. The aim of this base was to study the colonisation of juvenile corals in the area after the mass bleaching event in 1999 killed off 80% of the local coral cover. Our training involved learning 50 species of Coral, their latin name, and identifying each species just by using a single polyp as that is sometimes all we had to go by. The surveys were conducted on a random basis using a metre square quadrat at 3 depths, we conducted the surveys in buddy pairs often needing one buddy to hold the quadrat still on the shallow surveys.

Crown of Thorns Clean up, Tioman Island, Malaysia '07

This volunteer event occured whilst I was travelling in Malaysia after my IDC fell through at a local dive centre. On the Island of Tioman off of the east coast I was doing some free lance divemaster work, mostly for board and some lunch when this Crown of Thorns(COTs) clean up event was organised by a local conservation group. The promise of cheap dives and the opportunity to make a difference with some free training sounded perfect.

We spent a day learning the basics about

Crown of Thorns and the rapid population

growth or 'outbreak' that are occurring

around the Indo-pacific due to destabilised

ecosystems. This was followed by removal

techniques emphasising to not stress the

COT too much or it will spawn in defense and to not break limbs off as these can grow into a whole other COT. With the aid of yard long squared off hooks and large nets we spent 3 days around a small offshore island collecting close to 150 COTS per dive. These collected specimends were then taken to the beach and either buried deep or burned to make sure they coud not get back into the water or pose a threat to anyone else.

Nesting Turtle monitoring project, Curieuse Island, Seychells, Global Vision International '08

The second part of my volunteering expedition was to take advantage of the unique nesting habits experiences on Curieuse island. Turtles will nest here all year round and during the day, they believe this occurs because of the lack of population in the area but the day time nesting was not explained. Every day we were sent out on island wide walks looking for nesting sites and current nesting turtles.

Our job once a nest site was found was

to measure the tracks and identify what

species most likely made it and then find the actual clutch site and hide it. We also counted the number of potential attempts to nest as they are fairly obvious. If we found a turtle on the shore we would wait out of sight until the eggs

were laid and aim to measure the female

before she got back into the water.

These measurements would be put

alongside the track measurements for

correlating carapace size to track size.