Very good learning experience

My stay with the BDRI in Italy as an intern where I did my Master thesis was a very fruitful and great learning experience. All in all, I was involved in the programme for a period of a bit more than 3 months and learned a lot about the ongoing research of bottlenose dolphins. The institute is very professional and takes their research very serious so I felt in good hands while working on my thesis.

During the stay you have to live and work in close quarters with many people from all over the world who have different life styles and experiences so it can be also a time where you grow and have to learn to be flexible and show patience with things you would otherwise never be bothered.

For the programme as I experienced while staying in Italy, there was always one day off during the week , normally it was a Saturday. In good weather conditions we worked out on the boat (which means also the swell of the sea because it makes no sense to go out with high waves as you would not see any dolphins) performing different tasks to conduct surveys. When the weather was poor we stayed in the lab to enter all the data or prepared a new dolphin catalogue, worked on the thesis and many more things.

I would recommend this programme to everyone who is really interested to be involved with the research of marine mammals and if you have the opportunity to work even on a thesis while you stay there I believe strongly that you found in Bruno and the institute BDRI a great supervisor.