Intership

Going into my internship I must say that I did not know fully what to expect and was quite nervous about what we were going to be doing, especially considering I have about an 8km(5 mile) bike ride out there twice a week See I had been assigned to an internship called coast care. This organization is in charge of restoring one of the local beaches dune systems to its native ecosystem. Last year, the interns assigned to this program worked on things like weeding and planting. And that was not how I wanted my internship to go. I was looking for something a little more applicable to a potential future job. Or at the very least learn some sort of skill that may carry over to another part of my life. So when I arrived, I was greeted with the pleasant surprise of a different sort of project that had been drawn up for us by DOC (Dept of conservation). It entailed us doing a rough land/ plant survey of about 200m down the coastline, and extending about a quarter of a mile inland from there. And then doing a more detailed plant survey of the area Coast Care has already been planting in. The main purpose of this is to figure out exactly how much they’ve done, and then down the line be able to see how much progress has been made  since now. I was and still am pretty excited about this project.

            Our first day was spent walking around where they’d already been planting so that we could map out the area on a gps. In all pretty easy, but cool to be walking around these dunes, and even better to have an ocean view all day! Days two and three proved to be a bit tougher work. The task entailed first measuring out 50m away along a relatively central line from this pavilion that we used as our home base. Next the goal was to make it to the high tide mark, following a line that would end up perpendicular to the coast. Then from the high tide mark we followed the line back the way we came, this time recording distances, dune angles for elevation and the prominent plant life. We repeated this process 3 more times so that we ended up with 4 strait lines, dissecting the area. This process was not easy. We found ourselves struggling up steep sand dunes, fighting through the invasive wattle (a small tree) and of course smothering ourselves in sunscreen so that the intense sun didn’t burn us (it did). In all its been a really cool experience for me so far, and I look forward to  continuing to work on the project. Oh and I should mention that I am lucky enough to get to work with someone else from my program and that her name is Paige. Until next time, you stay classy planet earth.