A Session with the Videographer at The Crown Estate  

Before the event, we joined a videographer who took some footage of the interns working together on an exercise about the Marine Data Exchange (MDE), The Crown Estate’s world-leading collection of offshore marine industry data and evidence. This was a great opportunity to calm our nerves a little before the event, and to think about some of the things we like, dislike and want to see featured on the MDE website (which maybe they’ll use for inspiration in the future)! Following this, Jasmine and I presented part of our project to a group of people at TCE, allowing us to do some Q&A preparation, and to get some final practice in before the event. The videographer joined us on this session too which was good fun. The video aims to highlight the value of the internships offered at The Crown Estate, the skills and knowledge we have gained, and the experiences we’ve had working across various sectors and collaborating with those both internally and externally. It also features some alumni interns; showing examples of the career progression that can be made following the internship. You’ll have to wait until January to see the final product, but I’ve included a sneaky behind the scenes picture from Sarah Wren (Marine Evidence Manager Marine - Planning & Technical) who worked hard to organise the filming sessions for us.

The Presentations

Florence Peyton and Adam Rounce were the first of the interns to present their research, which focused on ‘Kittiwake Nesting Behaviour on Walney 2 Offshore Substation’. They visited the offshore substation and counted the number of adult and fledgling kittiwakes, and number of nests present to assess the productivity of the colony. They then compared this data to the St Bees kittiwake population to understand the differences in productivity levels. They found that Walney had a stable population, with a higher productivity than St Bees. They also aimed to investigate how aspect impacted the nest site selection, and provided future recommendations. They found that the kittiwakes favoured the north and underside of the substation; and have made predictions that this is likely due to these areas having more protection from weather. They also found that kittiwakes favoured the lower-level platforms on the substation and that overall, nest quality was poor. Their future recommendations included providing kittiwakes with nesting materials to improve the quality of nests at Walney, and to begin tracking and ringing these birds, allowing them to see how far they travel to find food, and if there is connectivity between this colony and the St Bees colony.

We were next to present. We presented our project ‘Creating a Marine Net Gain Pipeline for the Southern North Sea’. We spoke about what Marine Net Gain (MNG) is, explaining that it is a proposed piece of policy that aims to put the marine environment into recovery and requires offshore developments (for example, offshore wind farms) to leave the environment in a better state than before construction.

We then spoke about the structured conservations we had with lots of different people in the marine sector, including people who are currently working to create MNG, and those who would need to comply with MNG, when it becomes regulation. These conversations influenced how we designed our pipeline.

Following this, we presented our MNG pipeline and the metric that calculates how many ‘units’ of net gain a development would need to produce to hit their MNG requirement. The pipeline is a sequence of steps that a developer would follow to create a biodiversity net gain in the marine environment, which might be within their development site, away from their development site or a bit of both. We also showed the methods that a developer could hit their MNG requirements, for example restoring or creating saltmarsh, seagrass and native oyster sites just to name a few.

We ended with a few slides showing all the fun fieldwork activities we had got up to during the internship so far. This included National Marine Week activities, helping out Yorkshire Wildlife Trust with seagrass seed picking and oyster restoration for Ørsted’s Wilder Humber project and all of the fun visits to The Crown Estate and Ørsted offices in London.

There were lots of questions from the audience, online and in the room, which we enjoyed answering. It was great to see so much interest from everyone!

Next up was Max Renton and Lucy Lee’s Kent Inshore Fisheries Project, which aimed to understand the inshore commercial fishing community in Kent. They gave some recommendations into how we can work closer with fishers to benefit both the marine environment and sustainable fisheries. They created an information booklet as a guide to Kent’s inshore fisheries, which will be useful for stakeholders who want to engage with Kent’s fishing community. They showed us their findings from interviews with fishers, which included insights into what issues are affecting them and what their views were on the current fishing policy. They recommended a collaboration between Kent Wildlife Trust and Kent and Essex IFCA (Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority) to help fishers address the issues they are facing and provide some extra education on marine management to help bridge the gap between policy and fisher’s livelihoods.

Brilliant presentations guys!

Following the interns’ presentations, we heard from the internship’s alumni from last year. Leanne Riddoch, Maud Philippot, Tom Brady and Amber Gould presented their journeys in the last year since the end of their internships. It was great to see how their careers have progressed since the internship!

The Reception

Last but not least, the event ended with a reception in the foyer. The interns had created posters displaying the work of their other projects, and these were dotted around the room on easels for anyone to take a look. It was a lovely opportunity to chat with those we have worked with across a variety of organisations during the internships, thank them for our help and answer any extra questions anyone had.

We would like to say a massive thank you to Chelsea Bradbury and Harriet Baldwin (Marine Insights Manager – Planning & Technical) for making this event happen, along with The Crown Estate for hosting and funding us. Thank you to those within the partner companies, Natural England and Ørsted, for your support and help. And a big thank you to Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, particularly Tammy Smalley, for hosting us and giving us advice and fieldwork experience across Lincolnshire and the East Coast! 😊