We have been involved in so many amazing citizen science events. Eggcase hunts with school groups and Shoresearches with our volunteers. Even organising our own Shoresearch events in Rhoscolyn, Millionaire’s Row (Llandudno) and Porth Meudwy. We found so much fantastic life at all three sites, it really makes you realise just how lush the Welsh coasts are! Picnic with a Porpoise was a highlight, we did not see any of our resident porpoise but did see Risso Dolphins. We will have to rename the event!

London’s Calling! - We have made a few visits to London, to the Crown Estate offices. We have had writing and presentation training and great talks with the CEO, Dan Labbad and the Director of Marine and Head of Planning and Technical, Gus Jaspert and Olivia Thomas. We also met our fellow Crown Estate marine interns and since then have become a very close group. Of course, making the most of the coffee machine while we could too!

We have been to many events with M-SParc, which have been great for networking. These include, Business Wales expo, cross sector supply chain events and a Marine Energy Wales conference. All of which were great experiences. We have been progressing on our ‘decommissioning accelerator for fixed offshore wind’, in hope that we can build a case for the accelerator to be externally funded. This project will help build a connected supply chain and a workforce, capable of carrying out offshore wind farm decommissioning in North Wales.

Seagrass seed collection- we had a brilliant week of fieldwork (what more could you want!) at Porthdinllaen, one of Wales’ healthiest seagrass meadows and a donor site for restoration around Wales. We helped with picking the seeds which could be done by snorkeling or wading. We camped with the Seagrass Ocean Recue Champions as part of the seagrass seed collection too. The Champs are a group of [aspiring] marine experts! We met Iwan Rheon, or as some may know him, Ramsay Bolton from Game of Thrones. Dylan also featured on BBC Radio Cymru as part of a section that Aled Hughes was doing on seagrass. Rhys could be next as he has been on a week exclusion to Nant Gwrtheyrn to start learning Welsh!

Being involved in the great work Morlais is doing to ensure the west coast of Holyhead becomes a world leader in tidal stream energy has been amazing. We have visited their state-of-the-art substation in South Stack and seen the ‘Marinus’ buoy up close and personal (much bigger than it looks in the pictures). The Marinus buoy has collected a whole host of data from the tidal stream demonstration site, from acoustic monitoring to collision risk modelling. This is some of the data we are working on whilst with Morlais.

We were back on the east coast in Grimsby for our halfway presentation, this was to show (like this blog) all of the things we have been up to in our internship so far. We presented at the Orsted hub in Grimsby and it was a great practice for our final presentation, which is creeping ever closer.