After two weeks in Lincolnshire, our third week brought about our first travel outside of the county! With Kiera already in London, I travelled down on Monday morning to begin an exciting week with The Crown Estate (TCE) at their office in central London. We began by meeting the other marine interns who are based in Wildlife Trusts in Kent, Cumbria, and North Wales. This set us up for a great week, as we spent all of our time together, and we all got on exceptionally well. Monday and Tuesday consisted of questions and answers with TCE’s CEO, Head of Marine, and Head of Planning and Technical within Marine, as well as team building and writing skills sessions.
2024 Marine Interns Blog Weeks 3 & 4
Kiera and I at The Crown Estate’s London office, with the other marine interns who are based around the country.
After two weeks in Lincolnshire, our third week brought about our first travel outside of the county! With Kiera already in London, I travelled down on Monday morning to begin an exciting week with The Crown Estate (TCE) at their office in central London.
Kiera and I at The Crown Estate’s London office, with the other marine interns who are based around the country.
Me holding the Harris’s hawk at The Crown Estate’s annual summer celebration at Windsor Great Park.
Wednesday was a bit different, as it just so happened that this was the day of TCE’s annual summer celebration held at Windsor Great Park. All TCE employees were invited, so there was several hundred people present. The day was spent getting stuck in at all of the lawn activities provided, including human table football, archery tag, axe throwing, cycling, and, amazingly, a falconer with a Harris’s Hawk. In the evening, food and drink was provided, and it was a great opportunity to meet and chat with people, especially those within the marine department who may be useful to connect with regarding our projects.
Our last day consisted of more meetings, a “marine spatial planning game”, which provided really interesting insights into how TCE manages the UK seabed, and a tour of one of the nearby buildings that TCE own. We had an absolutely fantastic few days, and it was an absolute pleasure to spend the time with our counterpart interns based all over the country. Thank you to The Crown Estate for having us and making this all possible!
Friday, and the following Monday and Tuesday were back to normal, with me back to Horncastle and Kiera working in TCE’s London office. We spent these days doing lots of preliminary research for our projects and discussing this with each other, as well as having conversations with people from Orsted and Natural England.
Wednesday, back on the road! We travelled to Scarborough for the ReMeMaRe (Restoring (seagrass) Meadows, (salt) Marsh and (biogenic) Reef) conference, which was enthralling from start to finish.
ReMeMaRe conference held at Scarborough Spa.
Over Wednesday and Thursday, five main sessions were run: Investing in restoration; Policy, planning and sustainable finance; Science; Restoration through collaboration; and Restoration in action. It was so inspiring to hear about all of the restoration projects going on around the UK, and it was a great chance to meet people from different organisations within the marine sector. We spoke to some extremely knowledgeable people and gained some valuable insights that will be useful to us going forward.
A great evening came after the first day of the conference, where all of the interns present at the conference, and a few others from the Trust and TCE went out for a meal, then went to a local pub to watch England vs the Netherlands. The next morning, to freshen up for the second day of the conference, me and some of the other interns went for a swim in the sea! I was absolutely delighted to experience this, as it was my first time in the North Sea. It wasn’t too cold, but there was a noticeable temperature difference compared to the Solent! We concluded our time in Scarborough by visiting the SeaGrown boat café. SeaGrown is an exciting seaweed farming business, and they were one of the organisations who presented at ReMeMaRe, in the “investing in restoration” session. It was great to look around the boat, and learn more about what they do.
The SeaGrown café in Scarborough harbour.
Overall, it has been another fantastic couple of weeks. We really are so privileged to be in this position, and are making the most of all of the opportunities that come our way. A big shout out to The Crown Estate for hosting us last week, and to all the organisers and speakers at ReMeMaRe for allowing us to be involved in their great conference.
Ed