Dear All,

Over the past three weeks, the marine conservation programme here at MRCI has undergone major expansion. The previous programme manager has now been replaced by not one but three new full-time members of staff, his job is now divided between a full-time dive instructor, a coral reef specialist, and a data handling expert. While the previous programme manager’s achievements were undeniable (we miss you, Pete!), it’s clear how much more can be done when the work is better distributed, from little things like cleaning and re-organising the dive shed, all the way up to remapping the reef survey space, and switching focus from artificial reefs to coral transplantation.

That said, undertaking my LiA during this upheaval has meant that my role and impact has been substantially different to what I anticipated. Where I had imagined my work slotting into a large body of data and expanding an existing artificial reef, I now find myself collecting some of the very first coral reef data of an entirely fresh database, helping to identify healthy coral specimens on our artificial reef to transplant back to the natural reef for the first time. While it can be slightly frustrating to think that I will not be around long enough to see the well-oiled conservation machine I know these efforts will produce, this is vastly outweighed by the tremendous excitement of helping to shape the programme’s new direction. To this end, one of our new programme leads is organising a seminar-style event this week, where each volunteer will give a short presentation, linking their prior knowledge to a marine conservation context - my next job then, after writing this, is to start compiling my notes on my eco-brick pet-project to present in a few days’ time. Wish me luck!