October 15, 2019

Valerie Luppino – Intern Coordinator and Supervisor for White Shark Africa Research Internship

(wsavolunteer@whitesharkafrica.com)

Kali Gibbons worked as a Research Intern for the month of July, with the specific dates of

the internship being form July 1, 2019 to July 31, 2019. The internship was full-time, and the

approximate hours worked by all our interns was 160 hours for the entire month. The intern role

itself involved working directly with White Shark Africa, a conservation research and ecotourism

company located in Mossel Bay, South Africa. The responsibilities of the intern employees

included learning all crew positions to successfully run the ecotourism cage diving trips with

clients, educating clients during all points of the trips, and conducting research to assist in tracking

and managing the current population of juvenile Great White Sharks in the area. In addition to this,

interns had the opportunity to work with Chris Fallows, National Geographic, volunteer at the

Seabird and African Penguin Rehabilitation Center, and work closely with Keep Fin Alive, a shark

conservation organization founded in Mossel Bay. Another project that was worked on during the

month of July was the creation of an AI system that would assist in shark spotting and tracking

within the area, in order to better track the local population and hopefully assist in answering some

questions about the migration patterns being found in recent years on the coastlines of South

Africa.