It’s a sunny morning for the MIP-2018 interns, and it does not feel like we have already been residents of Labuan Bajo for four days.

Today we learned about storyboarding. What is storyboarding? This is a way to develop ideas and to plan our communications. The storyboard helps us to develop the outline of the video, to identify key messages, and plan the narration, audio, and footage.

Storyboarding is a skill that we will be sure to put to good use when we make our weekly videos. Our exercise today was to begin planning our first-week video. We chose four aspects of our first week, and begin to brainstorm what our key messages would be and what footage we would need. We received feedback from our mentors on our first attempt. They suggested that our messages were not clear and that we were trying to use too many different images. After a couple more attempts, we finally managed to make a storyboard with a short, solid outline and with clear key messages. Yes, we did it! Now to make the video!!

We also had a seminar on the biology of sharks and rays. Sharks are a top predator in our oceans and play an important role in the ecological food webs. They are also very closely related to manta rays. We talked about their range and distribution, and the use of tagging to understand migration routes. We learned about habitats, morphology, anatomy, taxonomy and how DNA studies are enabling us to learn more about their evolutionary history and to discover new species. We learned how DNA can help us to identify a species, and how this research tool can also be applied to inform the conservation and management of species.

Today we gained some useful knowledge about communications and sharks. We can’t wait to keep learning about the ocean and the marine creatures, and of course, we are looking forward to meeting manta rays for the first time!