Intern with A Purpose: Coral Reef Restoration in Mexico

What does it cost?

We deeply appreciate the time and effort dedicated by our interns towards coral restoration. As a small NGO, reliant on donations and course proceeds for our budget the work they do is invaluable.

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To ensure the long-term viability of our internship program, we kindly request a token contribution to offset some operational costs such as compressed air, additional equipment rental when needed, and crucial maintenance to keep our gear safe and in good working order for everyone.

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• MX$60 per tank (MX$2640 per month)  

• MX$2000 per month diving equipment rental.

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For context, equipment rental at local dive shops typically costs USD$25/day. This modest contribution allows us to continue offering valuable internship opportunities while responsibly managing our limited resources to ensure we can maintain our gear in safe and good working order for any intern that needs to use it.

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To help offset these costs, as well as the cost of transpiration, accommodations and certifications if needed, we encourage interns tally a budget and apply for funding opportunities. Your department should have and/or can direct you to them. Past interns have used them to cover most of their costs and we are happy to help with any paperwork needed on our side.

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Why do I need diving insurance?

Since diving is most importantly about safety we require all volunteers and team members of the CCRRP to have diving insurance. For the relatively inexpensive cost of less than $100USD per year, you can get full worldwide coverage. If you don’t have it already, we recommend getting the DAN Enhanced Membership along with their Diving Insurance Preferred Plan:

https://dan.org/membership-insurance/dive-insurance/

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Note that most travel insurance providers do not cover diving unless it's an add on. If you are unsure if you have diving accident coverage you should check with your plan. If not, note that the DAN is often cheaper than the add on.

What will I do as a intern?

Depending on needs, a restoration dive can consist of cleaning coral platforms, monitoring research projects, and planting restored corals in the restoration area of the nearby Villa Blanca Reef. As the intern gains more certifications skills and experience they will be gradually tasked with more specialized work such as monitoring our endangered corals nursery, marine species census, maintaining research of our existing research studies and ultimately performing their own.

We also do our best to accommodate our interns interests, their schools requirements, and research needs. We try to task interns on their skill sets with a marine biologist mostly working in the coral garden, a data scientist would be more tasked in our lab, white a tourism student can help with our ecotourism tasks. We can definitely task you according to your skill sets, but if you can give us some more information regarding which areas you'd like to specialize in we can accommodate you accordingly.

Do you provide lodging?

We do not provide accommodations but here are some suggestions: 

• Budget: Hostelito (local hostel, 10 min bike ride away)

• Mid-range: Airbnbs in Corpus Christi (10 min bike ride away)

• Hotel: Hotel Villablanca (affordable, walking distance)

​We offer free bike loans to all interns!

Why are these certifications necessary?

Due to the highly specialized nature of coral reef restoration we do require interns to have or receive during their time with us 3 specialized ecological diving certifications, Coral Reef Conservation, Fish ID, and Research Diver.

As diving is about safety, both the Open Water Diver and Advanced Open Water Diver certifications are required as prerequisites for these ecological courses, to ensure you have the core diving skills needed.

By getting those certifications interns will have both the skills and training to run their own research projects and enough experience to be an in demand marine biologist on any coral reef restoration project.

While we use the PADI certification system, we recognize all ISO diving certification organizations. If you were certified outside of PADI and unsure if you have these certifications please let us know so we can clarify things for you.

Normal costs of these certifications range from $250 for just the Coral Reef Conservation Corse to nearly $2,000 for all 5. But as we are aware of the financial pressures on our interns and are grateful for the work that they do, we provide a 30% intern discount for all courses, offering them at cost.

What are the hours like?

Our interns are on site for an average of 5 days a week from 9-10 to 2-3 and do 2 restoration dives a day. As we cannot dive during bad weather days some weeks we by default work less and then more the following week to offset it for an average of 35 hours a day. We try to always take Sundays off when possible.

The coordination is done via our volunteer Whatsapp group.