Duration of Internship: February 2023 – April 2023

Qualifications
B.Sc. Marine Biology, University of Plymouth (2021 – 2025)

Over the course of Emily’s three month internship with MER, she had the opportunity to get involved with a wide variety of different projects and develop a number of different skills. This included working with many different permanent staff members with interests in different areas and therefore the ability to engage in various scientific discussions in the office, lab and also in the field.  In particular, she worked on the marine litter monitoring project, creating videos to communicate the monitoring methodology. Emily was also involved in the monitoring itself, collecting macrolitter from beaches and seafloors and sorting the samples into categories according to the EU Joint list.

Additionally, she was involved in other fieldwork such as collecting water samples from fish farms, which she then helped to process in the lab to measure the chlorophyll content of the water around the fish farm. This process is part of ongoing monitoring of the fish farms’ operation to assess their environmental impacts. Another long term project that Emily helped with is the monitoring of the construction works at Paralimni marina. Here there is concern that the sediment released by the construction work will negatively impact the local community, including the seagrass (Posidonia oceania) meadows. To track the seagrass, dives are conducted to count the seagrass shoots in several fixed quadrats. The seagrass is also visually documented with photoquadrats, which are also used to calculate percentage cover in each quadrat location. Other activities that Emily was involved in include literature reviews and research for environmental impact assessments and lab work such as macrofauna sorting and granulometry for various survey works.

Emily’s highlights from her internship include: attending the Blue Limassol Forum 2024 at Frederick University; producing a series of informative videos for the marine litter monitoring project; and drone test flights for the IRSAI project.

Her words: “Overall, I enjoyed the opportunity to get involved with such a diverse range of projects. Having never been so far from home, I found this internship a great stepping stone in not only my academic development, but also for personal growth. Many thanks to all the team at MER.”