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My name is James Anderson. I am studying Marine and Freshwater Biology at Kingston University.
I am from Kingston originally so I've always lived in and around the area.
I saw it advertised on StudentSpace and then followed the links from there.
I am doing an internship with the South African marine predator lab looking at
the behaviouralchology of white sharks.
I had actually been emailed from my course director that they were looking for interns
back in January and I had already began my application processes to them
before I found out about the Philip Russell travel scholarship. So it was just an added bonus to find out that
there was an opportunity to get extra funding to ease the financial burden on myself.
The main use would be to fund my air fare to South Africa.
It is quite expensive especially at this time of year as it's high season for tourism,
so it will cover that. The rest of the internship I am funding myself.
I am leaving at the end of July and I am there for two months.
The actual internship starts the first of August and runs until the last day of September,
and then straight back here and into lectures.
The different research strategies that they are looking at
vary from genetic profiling to tracking them in their horizontal profile in the water,
and their vertical profile in the water; looking at the relationships
between predator-prey dynamics; looking at the effect of tourism operations in the area;
at shark cage diving and how that's altering the behaviouralchology of the sharks
that are local or resident within the area.
All of the approaches - the data sets they are collecting -we have access to a choice of
up to two of them to use for the final year dissertation which will be another advantage of doing the internship.
Primarily just in terms of finances - obviously a fair chunk of cost
is going to be the flight out there and return flight so that is going to help me a lot just on its own.
It also presents me with an opportunity that I wouldn't be able to get through the normal avenues available
on the course. I certainly wouldn't be doing any time with species such as the white shark.
I wouldn't be doing a trip as exotic or as exciting as going to South Africa
so it presents an opportunity that I wouldn't be able to get.
I can establish contacts with leading scientists in their field,
potentially open up areas where I might be able to
access work opportunities in the future that I wouldn't otherwise be able to access.
So it's good in a number of ways.