Sasha Wheeler

Name: Sasha Wheeler
Age: 28 (2024)
Nationality: United States of America
Current Profession: Master’s Student and Graduate Research Assistant 2
School & Major: Marine Science at Nova Southeastern University
Programme (s) completed at CCMI: 2-week Winter Internship – Reef Research Experience
Year programme was completed at CCMI:2017

How did the CCMI programme you completed help you develop professionally and/or personally? The weeks I spent at CCMI were pivotal in my future career as a coral biologist. During my internship, I learned to identify my first corals on the plane ride over, dove my first drop-off, cleaned my first coral trees, and perform scientific surveys for the first time in an environment that would one day become my field of study and my passion. There is no doubt looking back that I am a coral biologist because of the experiences I had at CCMI.

What is something you learned while at CCMI that you have never forgotten? I remember learning the difference between bioluminescence and fluorescence and then taking a night dive to see this wonderful phenomenon in action!

Is there something that you do differently now, because of what you learned at CCMI? To this day, I am the member of my lab that people turn to for Caribbean stony coral ID, it’s what I look for every dive!

Please share with us a favourite memory of your time at CCMI. My favorite memory of CCMI was near the end of my trip when my friend Jessie and I visited a sandy outcropping of pure white sand where two currents converged. This humble strip of land quietly persisted untouched and pristine in the middle of so much chaos and change. It was a picturesque footnote to a beautiful trip and a moment of peaceful reflection on an experience I was starting to realize would last me a lifetime. As I watched the small waves lapping into each other, I felt my own life converging on a new reality that was forming, a new passion that would lead me to where I am today.

You can contact Sasha to hear more about his internship experience with CCMI here: [email protected] or [email protected]

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