Salary: N/A
Closing date: Friday 6th January 2012
Location: Isle of Man
Full time volunteers needed for next season, working on the Isle of Man. Get involved with land & boat based surveys as well as public events & education.
As a full time volunteer for the Manx Whale and Dolphin Watch/Manx Wildlife Trust you will be spending the summer in the lovely city of Peel on the Isle of Man. Although it’s a city in name, it’s much more like a small fishing village on the West coast of the Island. Volunteers, or ‘Dolphineers’ as they’ve become known as, usually stay in a shared house by the beach in Peel at a cost of around £60 per week. Peel is a lovely place to live with a nice beach, impressive castle, entertaining pubs and the chance of seeing basking sharks from the breakwater.
Generally the activities you will be doing can be split into four categories- Land based watches, boat based surveys, office tasks, and public/outreach events.
Land based watches are at the core of what we do and where we get a lot of our information from. They are usually done by two people and last for 2-3 hours at a time, where we will collect sightings data on cetaceans, pinnipeds and basking sharks. We also collect photographic identification data, so we can make a record of re -sightings of individual animals, and you will be trained and participate in both the collection and interpretation of this data. We are also very keen to support individual projects from volunteers, and can provide help and support for undergraduate and master’s students. Please contact us in advance with your ideas & we can see if they can be incorporated into the work plan.
There are two survey boats which you will have the chance to go out on. The cetacean boat surveys allow us to gain abundance estimates of marine mammals from line transect surveys and also get photo identification and behavioural information when we encounter dolphins. These boat trips are usually the highlight of the summer, and the encounters we have provide us with much of our data. Cetacean surveys usually last all day as we tend to go out on a tide in the morning and return on the evening’s tide. We do not use the boat in rough weather so seasickness is not usually an issue. As these trips are very weather and tide dependent, please be aware that they do not always happen very frequently. The basking shark boat surveys are less dependent on the tide and tend to happen more frequently. On these trips, known basking shark hotspots are surveyed, with the aim of collecting information for individual basking shark ‘passports’. This includes the size and sex of the sharks as well as photo identification data, samples for DNA analysis and possibly satellite tagging. On each survey boat, you will be a fully active member of the data collection team, which includes writing notes, taking photographs and assisting with searching for animals. You will receive a full safety briefing and training session before you go on each boat.
The principal office activities you will participate in are data entry and photo identification. You will be taught how we process the data we record on our surveys into abundance estimates, and also in how we use GIS to map sightings. We also carry out photographic identification on cetaceans and seals to keep a record of re-sightings.
You will also spend a portion of your time working with the Wildlife Trust both at their offices in Peel and at public events such as marine awareness days. This will involve interacting with members of the public to further the causes of marine conservation. It may also include working with school groups either in school or during outdoor activities such as rockpooling. The Wildlife Trust also works in many other areas of nature conservation and education, which you will be able to get involved in. For example, you will also have the opportunity to spend a week assisting the wardens on the Calf of Man, a bird observatory on a tiny, remote island off the south west of the Isle of Man.
Our activities are very weather dependant, so we do not really have a typical week. We try to make the most of the good weather so this is when we are at our busiest, but you will normally get two rest days a week, and we are flexible about holidays, home visits etc.
Volunteers will commit to one (or both) time blocks. Blocks for 2012 are 2nd April – 17th June and 18th June – 31st August.
Contact details:
Email eleanor@manxwt.org.uk or phone on 01624 844432 for an application form.