EMR offers a number of volunteering opportunities and internship programmes. Our preferred season to offer internship opportunities is from October to May for a period of 1 month (but is open to longer periods on case by case basis). Please contact us if you’re interested.

Our EMR Experience
By Alison Armstrong and Anna Belcher (UK)

We spent two weeks volunteering for EMR in Whangarei, helping schools and communities experience their marine environment through snorkelling. We were lucky to be involved in the preparation and running of snorkelling sessions at some amazing locations on the North Island, such as; Goat Island, Reotahi, and The Poor Knights. It was amazing for us to see such a diversity of fish and gave us the opportunity to acquire fish identification skills. Not only this but we got to see how the children reacted to these incredible environments and see the excitement on their faces, “Did you see that fish? It was massive! Sweet as”. It was great to see how well the programme was working and how far it has progressed. The kids really seemed to gain an appreciation for their marine environment and why marine reserves are important.

The volunteer work gave us a chance to learn more about marine outreach programmes and how to successfully educate groups of children (and adults) whilst keeping them engaged and giving them an enjoyable experience. We really think that actually getting out there, seeing and experiencing the marine environment is the best way to learn about it. We each worked with a member of the EMR team, helping to run the snorkelling sessions and were also involved in maintenance of all the gear. It definitely gave us an appreciation of how hard the EMR team work to make a session successful. We’re pretty sure that we now hold the world record for the number of wetsuits glued and stitched!

Not only did EMR provide us both with a great experience and knowledge of marine outreach programmes but they also helped us find accommodation whilst we were volunteering. Without this support we wouldn’t have been able to spend as long volunteering, and really appreciate how helpful and enthusiastic the team were. We felt like we were actually useful to the team as we were quickly given roles of responsibility. They were keen to get us involved in all aspects of EMR projects and we both think we gained a lot from our time volunteering.

Thank you for everything Samara, Kim and Nicki, keep up the good work, maybe we’ll be back in New Zealand one day :-)