“I’ve made the best connections for my career”

When Penny White goes to work in the morning, she doesn’t have to dress up or battle rush hour traffic. She dresses warmly, breathes in the fresh ocean air and sets off down the trail to work.

White is a research assistant on an eight-month co-op term with the Bamfield Huu-ay-aht Abalone Project (BCHAP) in Barkley Sound on western Vancouver Island.

Abalone are single-shelled mollusks that play an important role in native culture. Their meat is traditionally used for food and their shells are used for jewelry and decoration. They were over-harvested after scuba gear was invented because it allowed divers to gather many at a time. Abalone harvesting has been banned since 1990.

The BCHAP team hopes to help replenish the wild abalone population, put commercially harvested pinto abalone back into the world markets, and be a financially self-sustaining hatchery within the next three to five years.

White has learned many valuable skills in Bamfield, including hatchery operation, water quality monitoring and diatom farming. Her days consist of preparing food for the abalone and rinsing their tanks before refilling them with water.

“The routine can get boring, but there are so many other priority jobs in between that my days are kept varied,” says White, who just completed a project comparing abalone diets. “I’ve also grown to love the alone time in such a tranquil place.”

White graduates this spring with a double major in biology and environmental studies. She plans to stay on indefinitely with the project as a paid intern. “I like working in Bamfield because people are so friendly and the air is so clean,” says White, whose first co-op was in Klemtu, a small village on the central coast of B.C.

“I love this town for the music, the art and the number of people running around with PhDs,” says White of Bamfield. “I’ve made the best connections for my career.”

White, who is a Tsimshian native, is also working on a guidebook to plant life in the Bamfield area for the local native band as a directed studies project. “I hope to do research for First Nations bands one day and possibly develop sustainable aquaculture ventures.”

Looking back on her experience with co-op, she encourages other students to check it out. “I had to make sure I’d be doing what I want, and if I hadn’t been in co-op I wouldn’t be in marine biology.”