A SEA OF TROUBLE

January 2020

Trouble. A sea of it.

That’s often what you might feel you’re swimming through when you slip under the thin blue line. Oceans plagued by rising temperatures and coral bleaching, scoured by trawlers, picked clean by overfishing, haunted by ghost nets, pockmarked by dynamite, churning with plastic… I could go on, as I’m sure you know, but it would probably just ruin your morning.

The speed and enormity of the anthropogenic annihilation I’ve witnessed since my childhood has convinced me we need to find new ways of engaging people with the nature we have left in order to protect it.  What’s the best way to move hearts and minds, inspiring action to save wild lives and the ecosystems they depend on?

I decided to study Zoology at university to try and find answers to the massive problems I’d witnessed in the field. However, I believe the wildlife conservationist of the future is multi-skilled:  someone who can design a research project, lead a field team, apprehend a poacher, mend a broken wing, train volunteers, fix a termite-ridden field base, take stunning photographs, treat a venomous snakebite, write a popular science article, dismantle snares, tag and identify animals, make educational videos, inspire schoolkids, and publish scientific papers. This course is the next step in that journey, and I believe it could represent the keystone of my education.

My first career began in the film industry at the age of eight, as a child actor. Working under high pressure on feature films in the UK and abroad taught me versatility and professionalism early on. I won two awards at the age of 14, but although I loved acting, I knew that my vocation lay in science. After my first volunteer experience monitoring South African wildlife aged 18, I was hooked.

Over two years of travelling and the four years of the Zoology course at the University of Manchester (which included a year in the field in Costa Rica) I signed up to every field course, volunteer programme and wildlife monitoring project I could. I gained research, husbandry and monitoring experience with African megafauna, spinner dolphins, Asian and Neotropical mammals, and more. At university, I became especially fascinated by animal behavior, cognition, ecology, and conservation. I achieved a first-class average throughout all four years of the course, and kept searching for solutions to some of the massive problems I was witnessing in the field. By the time my graduation was announced, with a first class degree and two awards for my academic performance, I was already on an expedition in Mexico with Operation Wallacea. All in all, over the last seven years, I’ve been lucky enough to work with and study wildlife in a dozen countries – yet my training is far from complete. I crave deeper academic learning to delve further into what I’ve seen first hand in the field and the topics I’ve become passionate about during my studies.

My understanding of the challenges ahead in conservation began to deepen during my placement year on a biological research station in Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica. Working on Tortuguero’s nesting beaches in Costa Rica for ten months, tagging and monitoring sea turtles, I learned a variety of wildlife surveying techniques including tracking, camera trapping, and audio-visual encounter surveys. I soon began training and leading volunteers and interns to carry out surveys, learning to work in tight-knit teams. I grew a taste for data collection with stringent accuracy and following strict protocols. I further developed these skills during my degree and on several other research positions, such as my role as a Large Mammal Scientist with Operation Wallacea, leading research assistants on biodiversity surveys in the Mayan jungle.

However, our efforts weren’t enough. While each of us might have protected a couple of thousand turtle hatchlings from the vultures, countless more were lost to the plastic debris that washed up endlessly on the coast, to nest-poachers, and to the coastal erosion caused by climate change strengthening the El Nino.

Once you have understood the problem, you must intervene to tackle it. At my next field position with ARCHELON in Greece, we did exactly that. Besides collecting data on nesting and tagging female loggerheads, we physically protected their nests from stray dog predation by surrounding them with cages made from metal grids and bamboo sticks. But while this may have saved many, every year, the stray dogs would multiply. Every night, the beach resort owners still shone their lights on the beaches, disorienting hatchlings and leading them to their deaths on the roads. And every few weeks, another nesting mother would still be stranded, crushed by a boat hull or shredded by propellers.

When encountering wildlife injured or killed as a result of human activity, I am strongly motivated to help. But in many of my previous positions, my power to do so was limited by legal restrictions, national park regulations, or the limits of my own expertise. For this reason, I have strived to increase my knowledge by gaining experience with wildlife rehabilitation and veterinary nursing: I have worked with big cats, cattle, bears, monkeys, wolves and wolfdogs in animal sanctuaries in Thailand, Colorado and Bolivia. I also qualified as an Advanced Wilderness Medic in 2017, and soon afterwards gained experience in human expedition medicine: I stood in as camp medic for two weeks in the absence of doctors for Operation Wallacea in Mexico. I am particularly keen to become more involved in hands-on marine conservation work, such as wildlife stranding rescue and rehabilitation programmes.

When we search for the root causes of conservation issues, the vast majority lead back to human activity – and the same goes for their solutions. To save wildlife, we must also speak to people. Although I chose to study animals, I have learned that modern conservation must be cross-disciplinary, and is doomed to fail without engaging with the public. To save wildlife, we must first communicate effectively to people, be it in raising awareness, providing alternative livelihoods, education, inspiration, or galvanising mass action. Media-for-conservation efforts, such as Blue Planet II’s coverage of plastic pollution and marine scientists’ work, have been instrumental in inciting real, measurable change.

I began honing my communication skills in Costa Rica, where I designed and carried out a photographic study of colour polymorphism in vipers, which is now under review for publication in the journal Zoology. Soon I was working as much on science communication as I did on research, presenting to and training volunteers and local stakeholders, editing and curating a portfolio of wildlife and landscape images. It led to my first photojournalistic publication: a front-page and centrefold colour feature on turtle and jaguar conservation in Biological Sciences Review. This was followed by another science communication publication in the same magazine this year, this time on the impacts of climate change on wildlife in Mexico.

On leaving university, a group of fellow students and I founded the Wildwork (shorthand for the Wildlife and Wilderness Workers’ Network). It started as a small Facebook group of friends and colleagues, but has grown to almost 10,000 wildlife professionals from over 100 countries, collaborating together to provide each other with career advice and opportunities. Using powerful outreach tools such as social media, photography, writing, and wildlife filmmaking, we seek to tell inspiring stories of wildlife protectors to the wider public beyond scientists and professional Wildworkers. In line with this, I have created content, delivered presentations and held workshops aimed at communicating environmentalism and its efforts to a wide range of audiences – UK A-level students, diving novices, animal fanciers, and local women and schoolchildren in developing coastal communities as far afield as Fiji and Indonesia.

To better achieve effective communication across diverse traction channels, I undertook a digital marketing course with Paradise Interns, learning advanced social media outreach techniques. I spent five months managing social media for Manta Rhei Dive Center in Indonesia. During this time, I completed my Rescue, Nitrox and Divemaster certifications. I gained underwater imaging and wildlife guiding experience in the renowned challenging currents of Komodo National Park, and to date have logged over 100 dives in five countries, as well as progressing considerably in free diving. Leading SCUBA dives for guests as a guide in the National Park, I provided extra knowledge about the wildlife we encountered, such as the names of reef fish, and how to safely and respectfully interact with megafauna such as manta rays and marine turtles.

While this ecotourism position may seem a divergence from my usual work, I was not idling in terms of marine conservation efforts. I assisted Trash Hero’s weekly beach clean-ups, and supported Marine Megafauna Foundation volunteers by submitting manta ray photo-ID data to Manta Matcher. But my main endeavor was to explore alternative livelihood options for locals around Komodo National Park who still engage in illegal, unsustainable fishing. To this end, I began experimenting with small-scale upcycling, turning ghost gear from Trash Hero beach cleans and construction waste into jewellery. I set about teaching the techniques to my dive center’s boat crew, Trash Hero volunteers, local children, and a local women’s environmental group. My fellow Divemasters soon began hunting and harvesting ghost gear in Komodo to make the bracelets for friends and family.

I then planned out a recycling industry project, which sought to replace unsustainably harvested wood and high-CO2 cement with recycled ocean and beach plastics. The idea was to tackle the town’s problems of waste management and rapid industrial development, whilst also providing locals with another way of making money from harvesting solid pollutants, and showing the potential value of so-called ‘trash’. As I pitched the idea to local stakeholders, the traction of my project grew and over 15 businesses, dive centers, and NGOs agreed to collaborate – including Trash Hero and WWF Indonesia. We are currently searching for seed funding to get the project off the ground.

Media-for-conservation efforts, such as Blue Planet’s coverage of plastic pollution and marine scientists’ work, have been instrumental in inciting mass behavioural change for conservation. Showcasing rarely-seen pioneering work at the forefront of marine conservation research generates interest and reach, allowing us to explain the importance of these efforts. This is key to changing Western consumer behavior to support small-scale community fisheries as opposed to destructive industrial fishing.

However, I still did not realize the potential impact of using media for environmental causes until I returned home to London. Becoming involved with Extinction Rebellion as their social media coordinator last November, I soon found myself at the heart of what is now an international mass movement. XR is dedicated to communicating the urgency of our current state of environmental crisis, and to mobilizing thousands of activists using civil disobedience to push for climate and ecological justice. It was my responsibility to convey that message, and then to assemble, structure and train a growing social media team to do so on all of our different social media channels. It has been surprising to see how quickly we have been able to motivate people to take action, particularly through several of the campaigns I initiated which took off: #HumansofXR to reveal personal motivations behind civil disobedience, #PainttheStreets to communicate the truth of the emergency to the public, and the one-year Fashion Boycott to withdraw support from this polluting industry. In the near future, beyond the Media and Messaging team, I will likely be involved in further campaigns as part of XR’s Animal working group, as well as the XR Academics, Scientists and Researchers group.

Be it informative writing, powerful photography, or inspiring videos, I am learning to create media with a solid basis in science, a verbal style accessible to a broad audience, and strong messages of conservation optimism. I consider this vital to effectively communicate the results of scientific research in order to educate people and motivate collective action. I see media as the tool we need to make and accelerate change in light of scientific findings: this is how we inspire the wider public to join the conservation movement, and devote themselves to environmental causes.

Yet none of this is possible without firm and up-to-date knowledge of the science, participation in the research I am communicating, and strong roots in the scientific community. In particular, I want to explore the effectiveness of conservation solutions, from tried-and-tested success stories to pioneering new ideas – and find out how to get ordinary people taking part to make the best projects thrive. In the long run, I hope to use scientific research and communication to redefine humanity’s relationship with the natural world: a new way of living alongside nature which is based on guardianship rather than exploitation.

This is an extract from Raph’s application to Exeter University’s conservation course. He died before he was able to send it.