When you are looking at undergoing an industry placement, you don’t always have to go the conventional route. Nur Arafeh Dalmau, PhD candidate from the School of Biological Sciences, not only found a placement opportunity with a prestigious research organisation, he was able to mix in a little adventure as well.
Nur had been thinking about undertaking a placement for a while when he found out through his wife’s HDR advisor that there was a spot left on the CSIRO research vessel The Investigator. Nur couldn’t pass up on the opportunity, and contacted the CSIRO to see if they would accept a HDR candidate placement.
“It was always my dream to join an oceanographic research expedition. I have been on many diving expeditions, but not an oceanographic vessel.
“We flew to Hobart. From there, we crossed the Bas Strait and headed north. We cruised near the Sydney coast and to Fraser, and ended in Brisbane,” he said.
The mission of the voyage was to retrieve an array of oceanographic instruments that have been in place to monitor the intensification of the East Australian Current due to climate change.
“Imaging thousands of metres of cable with oceanographic instruments being retrieved or deployed takes hours and clinical precision,” he said.
At times it was challenging sorting through tiny creatures in a microscope on a ship in the unstable Pacific waters.
“I had 12 hour shifts from 2pm to 2am (although we usually worked less). We used bongo nets to survey jellyfish and fish larvae, and then sorted the samples in the lab,” he said.
Nur had an incredibly positive placement and would recommend it to other HDR candidates.
“It is an exceptional experience, make sure you do it in a place that you admire, with people that you want to work with, and in an ideal setting,” he said.
You can read more about the voyage in ABC News’s reporting from the time.
If you are a UQ HDR candidate and would like to explore your placement opportunities, attend an information session to learn more about the program.
