My name is Wilson Haims and I am the 2024 Joanna Toole Intern at the Center for Coastal Studies through the Ocean Conservancy’s Global Ghost Gear Initiative. I look forward to spending the next three months working with the CCS Marine Debris Program to recover lost or abandoned fishing gear, collaborate with members of the fishing community in Provincetown, and work with marine debris and ghost gear data. I will spend the following three months with the Global Ghost Gear Initiative working on marine policy and outreach.
I am from Maine and recently graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in Environmental Studies. In 2022, I participated in an ocean and coastal studies program directed by Williams College called Williams-Mystic; there, I honed my interest in marine issues and gained more experience on the water. Upon returning to Wellesley, I took courses that reflected my growing interest in marine environments and by the time I graduated, I had plans to work in Alaska as a marine educator. In Alaska I grew immensely as a naturalist, educator, and as a person. I worked from Homer Harbor and regularly interacted with the commercial, sport, and subsistence fishermen. As the summer progressed, I had the opportunity to go salmon fishing and I became increasingly compelled by human relationships to the ocean and our reliance on its resources; fishing merges the concepts of tradition, culture, subsistence, science, connection to nature, and technique in a way that is challenging to find in other professions or recreational endeavors.
When I returned to Maine, I was eager to learn more about commercial fisheries in New England and the connections between industry, sustainability, and conservation. When I discovered the Joanna Toole Internship, I was struck by how unique the opportunity is: I will have experience recovering ghost gear from Cape Cod Bay, working directly in collaboration with a fishing community, and then translating that knowledge through outreach and policy. Beyond the comprehensive approach I get to take with this position, I am fascinated by how collaborative this work is and who it speaks to. In my first week with CCS, I met artists, fishermen, environmentalists, scientists and a fishing net recycler. In my interactions with these individuals, I quickly learned that many of them claim more than just one of these titles. It is my hope and intention to learn from these diverse perspectives and incorporate them into my approach to this work, and I look forward to exploring where this experience takes me.
