Name: Sam Wilson
Nickname:
Jingoy (philippines nickname), Mule, Gomez
Where are you from / Where do you call home?
I’m from the UK, and I suppose that’s still where I consider home, but I also haven’t lived there for the last 10 years so for now, the Philippines is my second home.
What are you best known for? If we asked your friends about you, what would they say?
I think I’m best known for being relaxed and easygoing, I find it easy to get along with most people. My friends would also probably say I’m a bird nerd, they’re just the easiest animals to find when you’re out photographing wildlife so it’s easy to get into it.
What’s your background (i.e. previous work experience or education)?
I studied Conservation Biology at Plymouth University in the UK and worked mostly with terrestrial conservation. I worked in the UK, Costa Rica, and then Mexico where I fell in love with diving. I built up some basic knowledge of marine biology working there and went back to university in St Andrews to get my MSc in ecosystem-based management of marine systems (not a snappy title!). That helped me really understand the marine environment and how to work to improve it. From there I went to the Philippines to do my SCUBA instructor course, and I started working in small NGOs around the Visayas before ending up here!
What inspired you to get into marine conservation?
The diving really drew me into it. Having spent years looking for all the wonderful animals you can find on land, when I started diving and seeing the amazing underwater world with all of its alien creatures, I was hooked on using my conservation skills to focus on that world.
What brought you to Reef-World & why do you care about the work we do?
I have worked with lots of small NGOs in the past and have had amazing experiences helping coastal communities build their capacity to conserve their marine environments on a local scale. Stepping up to work on a larger scale was a natural step for me. My partner (Emma) also started working with Reef-World a few years back, and so I knew through her that they were a great team and really focused on impact-driven work. I’ve seen so much good come from tourism operators that work together for conservation and sustainability, and imagine if they weren’t the odd ones out! If most of the industry was motivated to push forward with sustainability and conservation, the impacts can be huge.
What’s your role at Reef-World and what does that look like (i.e. what do you do on a day-to-day basis /what are you responsible for as well as just job title)
My role is similar to the other programmes officers, but with a few differences. As a team, we work together managing the Green Fins initiative worldwide, which can range from communicating with and assisting members, national government teams, or our partners. My role more specifically looks at managing and analysing the data that we have. This can also change from day to day, but in general, I’ll be assisting the wider team with insights into our data and looking ahead to what we might want to know from it in the future and how we can use our data to help increase our impact and the impact of our partners and members.
What do you enjoy the most about your role?
Well one of the top perks for me is that I get to work with my partner Emma! We’re both passionate about conservation and have usually had to work on different islands, so being able to work together finally is a big perk. Other than that, I am constantly finding new ways to use my role in the team for exciting projects. Certainly being part of the programmes team and being involved in training where we get to travel and empower new local government teams is a big highlight. You get to really know the people who implement Green Fins and while it can be a lot of work, the rewards are worth it. Day to day though, as nerdy as it sounds, creating the graphs and visualisations of our data can be really enjoyable, trust me! It takes some patience and more than a few trials and errors, but when I find the right combinations to show a national team or even our own team something interesting in our data it feels great!
What one piece of advice would you give to someone wanting to get into the marine conservation sector?
Be flexible with your expectations at the start of your journey, be patient, but also know your worth. The marine conservation industry is highly competitive and getting your foot in the door can be challenging, but make sure that you consider your own mental health along your journey and don’t be afraid to pass over jobs that might expect a lot from you without giving as much back. Ask yourself, what do YOU want from this job? Not just what you think you can give. Reach out to people, use LinkedIn or Facebook and start talking to people who have jobs that you might be interested in. We’re all in this together, and we’ve been through similar challenges to get here. I personally love it when people reach out to me for advice or guidance on their career path. If I don’t know how to help, chances are I know someone who does! That was a bit more than one piece!
Outside work, what are your hobbies/favourite pastimes?
I’ve always enjoyed wildlife photography and love going to new places and trying to capture the wonderful wildlife there. It helps that my girlfriend and I also love hiking and exploring new areas with lots of nature and fewer people. Our 3 dogs also enjoy joining in with that too. Another top one for me though is RPG or adventure games. I haven’t got a console over here yet, but I’ve always found playing games a great way to switch off from work and unwind, and mobile games certainly helped make that possible everywhere.
What’s your favourite marine animal and why?
I really like the peacock mantis shrimp. They’re very interesting to watch interact with other animals near their dens, plus their incredible colour perception and the crazy physics behind their punch.
What marine animal are you most like and why?
I like to think I’m like a turtle or a manatee. Never moving too quickly but travelling around a lot, pretty relaxed most of the time, and almost always eating. That sounds like me.
When and where did you qualify as a diver? What made you want to try scuba?
I actually started in the UK. My first dive outside of a pool was in a quarry with about 2m visibility. It was with the scout group my school friends, and I were all a part of, so we had a lot of fun but perhaps didn’t take it too seriously. I forgot about diving for a while after that, but I kept having dreams of breathing underwater. Eventually, after working in conservation on land and looking for a bit of a change, I tried a divemaster internship with a conservation group and realised I had actually been dreaming about diving! After that, it was pretty clear that I was going to stick with it.
Tell us about your most memorable dive…
This is always a tough question! I’ve had some pretty incredible dives, but the most memorable one would be when I saw a Great Hammerhead shark. The dive itself was pretty mediocre, I was actually just there with 2 other divers, and I was supposed to be doing a fake survey to demonstrate to some partners what our surveys look like and how we conduct them. It was in a pretty shallow area, with not much visibility (around 5m), and not an area known for any sharks or really anything interesting at all. Suddenly the hammerhead just appears in front of us, swims a few circles in front of us to check out what we are, then gets bored of us and swims off. It was big too, around 2.5 metres.
& one diving destination still on your bucket list?
Borneo is a clear top for me. I’ve had a few friends work or just travel there and say it was the best diving they had ever done. Hard to beat a review like that!
Star sign and how you express it:
I’m Aries, but I have absolutely no idea what that means!
If you could have one superpower, what would you choose and why?
I probably choose a different superpower every time someone asks me this, and I also get too geeky about the technicalities of each superpower… Today I’ll choose flying. I do enjoy aerial views of places, natural or man made. Plus you could probably find really cool stuff in the ocean flying all over it!
What’s the strangest injury you’ve ever had?
A bite from a Titan Triggerfish, it bit me right on my bald spot, before I started shaving my head, so I guess it just saw that as a shining target!
Tell us something most people wouldn’t know about you?
I used to play the violin. Nothing professional but I did perform in a few theatres in London like the Royal Albert Hall with an orchestra. I have now forgotten everything I learned about playing the violin though!
