Corinne Goyetche is a former '06 SFS intern at the Center for Marine Resource Studies in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and most recently, for the Oceania Project in Australia.

What was your role with SFS?
I assisted the field work done by SFS students. I gathered field data for various projects including juvenile lemon shark migrations, sea turtle population characteristics, fish communities, and coral reef benthic community structure. I also assisted in teaching coral reef and mangrove-associated invertebrate and fish identification to the SFS students. I acted as dive master for recreational dives, and provided supervision for students doing underwater research via SCUBA, as well as various day-to-day responsibilities including basic maintenance and driving of the research/dive vessels, filling SCUBA tanks, and maintaining the dive shed.

Why did you choose to work for SFS?
The internship at the Center for Marine Resource Studies appeared to offer the hands-on work experience I was looking for, giving me the opportunity to work on various different projects and to develop a wide range of skills. Also, the pictures of the crystal-clear waters and the coral reefs helped me to make my decision!

What was your favorite memory of your experience?
Although my reasons for working with SFS were based mainly on the marine environment, I think some of my best memories came from our encounters with the local people on South Caicos. My favorite memory of all was celebrating Christmas towards the end of the semester. Some of the local people came around to the Center caroling, and then there was a huge celebration in town with fireworks and music. Everyone on the island came out to celebrate that night. It was wonderful celebrating Christmas on a tropical island in quite a different way than we do at home. The spirit of the holidays was very much the same, though.

Will you describe the project you were just involved in and what your role was?
Right now, I am in Queensland, Australia. I just finished my 2008 season working with the Oceania Project, based out of Hervey Bay. We conducted research on the population of humpback whales on the east coast of Australia. The Project has been studying this humpback population for the past 19 years and has followed and documented its recovery over the past several decades. This population was almost wiped out by commercial whaling, but now has a count of 10,000 individuals. This is great, but the humpbacks still have a long way to go before the population can be considered "recovered" and, like many other cetaceans, there are many things threatening this recovery.

Trish and Wally Franklin, the primary researchers, have been using photographic identification techniques to identify individuals, gathering invaluable information about abundance, population structure, and life histories of many humpbacks. Trish has been studying the behavior observed within each pod of whales and has documented some truly fascinating findings. This is what I was involved with, for the most part, during the season.

I also helped to gather sloughed skin samples, which are being used for cutting-edge genetic analyses of individuals. This season, Wally, their son Mark Franklin, and I worked on a project documenting the acoustics of the whales. We wanted to document the occurrence of whale song in Hervey Bay using hydrophones. I did hydrophone recordings three times daily throughout the season, and again, we found some very interesting trends (any results will be found in Trish and Wally's scientific journal articles, which will eventually be published).

What did you take away from SFS that you were able to draw upon in this position?
A lot of skills that I gained at SFS have helped me in my position with the Oceania Project. First of all, I learned how to adapt to different living conditions while living on South Caicos. I lived for three months on a boat in the middle of the ocean with the Oceania Project, which was an incredible experience, but it had its challenges. My experience at SFS helped me be more adaptive to the situation. Also, the Oceania Project, much like SFS, is an educational entity and is supported by interns who participate in the expedition. Therefore, I was living in close contact with a wide range of people from all walks of life, much like I did with SFS.