Internship Dispatch: Raph Boivin
The first half of my internship has been full of opportunities, lessons, and unexpected projects. I am lucky to be working with two different organizations this summer: part time with Ocean Wise, and part time with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) in environmental compliance for the Eastern region.
My work with Ocean Wise has allowed me to start developing my graduate research project. My coworkers in the Fisheries and Seafood team, a few of which are Dalhousie Masters of Marine Management graduates, have all had great insight and have been very supportive in the process. I have been so grateful to learn more about how Ocean Wise’s recommendation program works, as I’ve always had an interest on food systems and seafood more specifically. I’ve been able to lend a hand in the recommendation process for a few fisheries. I’ve also learned more about Ocean Wise’s small-scale fisheries program. Our team is currently working with four small-scale fisheries across the country to help them gain better market access, certifications and overall resiliency, which is important especially in fishery-dependent communities. This work has been very enlightening and I’m looking forward to learning more in the second half of the summer.
With Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the scope of my work has definitely been a bit broader than I expected. In environmental compliance, I’ve been able to help out my team with contaminated sites management and species at risk observations. I’ve also been learning more about halocarbons and different environmental contaminants, especially in small craft harbour sites. I’ve even been able to attend a very interesting training session about different site remediation technologies. More recently though, I went on a field visit with my team to the Eastern Shore to install a bat acoustic monitoring device on one of our sites. This project is led by Environment and Climate Change Canada and aims to learn more about bat migration on the East Coast to understand how these populations could be impacted by offshore wind development. It’s been great to be able to link my studies with the work I’m doing at DFO. Even though my job is not all marine-related, I’ve been supported by an amazing team of co-workers in the environmental field and have been introduced to fascinating people. This has been a great opportunity to expand my horizons and understanding of environmental issues in general!
I am excited to see what these next few months will bring and I am soaking in every bit of knowledge I can. I am very grateful for all that I’ve been learning so far and can’t wait to see what’s next! A big thank you to my teams at Ocean Wise and at DFO for making this internship experience so enriching, and to the FishPeoplePlace lab for being so supportive and enthusiastic about my summer.