What new recruits get put through …..

….. a test to see if they have what it takes to survive of course!

Over the coming summer the Ocean-Bottom Instrumentation Facility will be running a pilot of an internship programme.

Our goal is to outreach and publicise what interesting and unusual careers engineering skills can enable, whilst also trialing a training scheme to develop those engineering skills ourselves for those already with a background knowledge of the Earth Sciences.

We are starting small in our pilot programme and have recruited two summer interns who are just about to graduate from geophysics degree programmes.

As part of this programme these interns will learn now to operate our instrumentation, participate in the preparations and mobilisation of it for its next at-sea use, and even go on that research expedition to experience instrumentation operation at the forefront at sea.

But, before we can let them loose on that, they have to pass a Mariner’s Medical Examination and a Personal Sea Survival course.

This week these interns attempted the latter, which included rain, wind, darkness and waves – to simulate at-night vessel abandonment and bad weather.

Congratulations to both as they passed with flying colours!

Here is what they were subjected to.

1 – Are they comfortable in deep water?

2 – Can they don a life jacket whilst treading water?

3. Can they collectively stop individuals drifting away, surviving as a group?

4. Does a bit of rain put them off?

5. What about when the sea gets a bit choppier?

And – most important of all ….

6 – Can they get into a life raft?

This is all par for the course for us old hands as we have to do this training every few years.

But without the certificate that successfully passing this course brings, we would not be permitted to board the UK’s fleet of research vessels.