James was lucky enough to be selected for a work experience placement with the Department of Environment at their headquarters on North Sound Road in George Town.

In his own words:

This work experience was to help me understand what I need to work for in my education. As a result I have a clear image of what my goals after my GCSE’s are. I am now clear in my mind that I want to work in conservation or marine biology. It also helped me to:

1. Get a look at what marine biologists do for work.

2. What qualifications i need for that particular job.

I found during my week that the job can range from dissecting lionfish to foraging for parrot food, from chasing turtles to diving, repairing reefs to studying mangroves!

On the first day I went out to cut up bits of lionfish with skin lesions and put them in bags for shipping. They will be sent off to England for analysis to understand what diseases they have!

Day two involved going out to the Georgetown waterfront. I went diving to investigate coral damage caused by a superyacht that was anchored on Cayman during Hurricane Irma.

Day three. It was the end of this years turtle nesting season and the last nests had not quite hatched yet, consequently I had to dig the baby turtles out of the egg chamber a foot deep into the sand. One nest yielded 112 baby turtles.

Day four was probably the most eventful day, from 11:00 to 3:00 I was out on a boat catching turtles for data, information and to tag them for conservation monitoring. Some of these turtles were huge titans and others were small, the shells of the big ones were over a meter in length and the little ones were half that size.

On the final day i went foraging for parrot food.