Project Manaia

Are you a motivated Marine Biologist, Ecologist or somewhat different water associated Person?
Great! If you have an Idea for a Research Project in the wet Environment, no matter how big/small and need some help to pull it all together an make it happen you found the right spot! We are seeking motivated people to get on board!

So here is the offer we make: We do have a boat, capable of housing 6 people in comfort (2 crew and generally 4 bunks free).
On board we also have a small assortment of useful gear for Marine Research, including Microscopes, Binoculars, DJI Mavic Pro Drone, Open ROV Trident, 4K Video Cameras, High quality sound recording equipment as well as the necessary hardware and software to cut, edit etc all of this.
And all this you are welcome to use (or we use it for you) during a stay on board! The ultimate goal of Project Manaia is pushing Marine Research ahead and making sure we have a marine environment to protect in a few years from now, so therefore we feel like any option we can offer a likeminded person to push in that direction should be taken!
So send us a proposal of the work you would like to run aboard our SY Independence and we will try to fit you in!
Everyone on board is expected to also help with daily tasks on board as well as help fellow researchers with their data collection. Due to the limited space on board we might all end up helping each other out (yet another good networking experience)

After running our boat for several years I have to say running costs are significantly smaller than the ones of a research ship.
With a full boat (7 people) we ended up around 1000 Euro per week, including immigration fees, occasional Marinas, fuel, small jobs that needed doing on the boat as well as food for everyone on board.
So all in all the costs break down to either 1k/week for the boat or ultimately 150 Euros per person and week.
Keep in mind that all this is shared costs among everyone (including skipper and owner of the boat!)
This being said, we did manage to entirely fund previous research expeditions via crowdfunding, grants and other means. Generally I like to assume that people do everything in their power to make those projects happen therefore the deal is this:
If everyone on board pulls along and tries to get a grant, runs a fundraising event etc. all the proceedings from any of those get put in a shared pot from which the running costs are covered. Ones this pot is used up we restart. Sounds fair? Great!

We are firm believers in the concept of working together. And this does not stop at the data collection. If we want to work towards healthy oceans for future generations we do not have the luxury of wasting time any more. So if data is collected it needs to be shared amongst everyone who could make use of it.
Therefore all collected data during a research cruise with us will be publicly available on our website and/or google spreadsheets and useable for other NGOs, researchers and scientists around the world working on similar topics. This does not only help everyone with their reach, but also saves time and ultimately speeds up the search for a solution to the problems we keep working on!

While positive results are clearly not something we can promise, we are hoping for amazing outcome in the future projects!
While the world is busy pointing out problems we very much encourage people to think about the solutions rather than getting stuck in the downward spiral of millions of issues we are all struggling with.
If 10 years from now we can jump into the water and see a seagrass meadow and a coral reef, we are on a winning track.
So yes, the ideal outcome is a positive impact on the world more than anything. Of course we are happy if also a financial buffer remains in the end of an expedition, since maintenance costs on the boat tend to explode at times and usually these are the times when money is tight, so we are working on an emergency budget for the future.
However, the goal is: Protecting an environment we know too little about!