Bahamians Silia Woodside and Franchesca Palomino have been selected to receive the 2017 Alf Thompson Memorial Scholarship. They will spend four weeks at the Bimini Biological Field Station, better known as ‘the Shark Lab’, studying, working and living with other interns, graduate students and with shark and marine biology research scientists from around the world.
Twenty-five year old Silia Woodside (left) hails from West End, Grand Bahama. She has been an active SCUBA diver from a young age, which encouraged her to pursue studies in marine biology and ecology. She recently earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of New Brunswick and is currently pursuing graduate studies.
Silia is firm in her commitment to work on improving the Bahamian marine ecology. She states “I would love to eventually come back home to the Bahamas and apply the knowledge that I received to researching more about our coral reefs and the species that inhabit them. I would hope to further apply this knowledge to implementing conservation strategies that would help sustain our marine life populations as well as improve the health of our coral reefs.”
Franchesca Palomino (right), a native of Nassau, Bahamas, is a twenty year student entering her senior year at the University of The Bahamas. She is in the Small Island Sustainability programme, majoring in marine science.
When asked about her future, Franchesca said “I really hope to go on to work with an environmental agency here in the Bahamas after graduating; whether it be at BREEF, Bahamas National Trust, BEST Commission, Cape Eleuthera Institute or any organization that serves in bringing awareness to the Bahamian people the importance of the environment and protecting it. I hope to work here in the Bahamas because we have such an amazing amount of biodiversity and amazing ecosystems. These play such a vital role to human life, their importance needs to be recognized, appreciated and protected not just for their own intrinsic value, but for future generations to come.”
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