Into The Blue

Sometimes, the natural world can feel a very long way away. In the winter of 2017, in central Manchester surrounded by concrete, tarmac and road noise, with ambulances speeding along the road outside my student house and rain pouring down, the world felt grey and I felt rather blue. Studying conservation at university only served to widen the disconnect between my industrial surroundings and the place I really wanted to be: in the wild.

I’m a country girl. I like green hills, open skies and bustling clouds, rustling trees and insects buzzing past. I like stories about explorers, places I’ve never been and science about tropical species I’ve never heard of before. I started looking for opportunities to get away, to delve into something deeper. When my university offered the chance to go on a placement year, it seemed like the perfect thing for me. Time to get a bit of real world experience, and put myself out there.

But where to?

When I was very young, my bedroom was painted blue with gossamer sheets hung from the ceiling, dotted with handmade cardboard fish. It was like being underwater, looking up at the breaking waves. I could tell you about every kind of cetacean you might find in the sea around Britain, even though I lived just about as far inland as its possible to get in England. Marine biology seemed like the dream for me.

Growing up, I drifted away from this. For a long time, I floated away from science entirely. But like a strong current carrying me along, eventually I was brought back towards my childhood dreams. I’d finally enrolled on a conservation course at university, and just completed a marine biology module. When Operation Wallacea, the conservation research organisation supporting student field work around the world, came to my university and spoke about their projects in Indonesia, I felt inspired. The coral triangle. One of the most biodiverse places on Earth. This is where I wanted to be.

I had learned to dive a few years before, so signed up to undertake my dissertation project data collection out in the field with OpWall, looking at fish communities in tropical coral patch reefs. The next few months passed in a haze of fundraising, research, and shopping on eBay for a decent wetsuit. Before I knew it, June had rolled around and it was time for me to get on a plane. Time to jet away from a hard, stressful year in a city which didn’t suit me. Time to head off into the unknown, to the other side of the world, out into the blue.