Employer case study: Love the Oceans

by Francesca Trotman

How did you get into your role?
My name is Francesca Trotman, I’m the Managing Director and Founder of the non-profit marine conservation organisation called Love The Oceans. We’re based in Mozambique, I have my residency there so live there most of the year. I come back to England periodically for recruitment and to visit family.

I’ve been obsessed with sharks since I was eight years old. I learnt to dive when I was 13. I knew I always wanted to do something to do with the oceans at University so I chose Marine Biology as it was an obvious choice and did it at University of Southampton. I did the integrated Masters course there (four years). At the end of my second year I went on holiday to Mozambique for diving and saw my first shark killing which was very emotional given my attachment to sharks. I soon realised that it was the shark fin industry as a whole I needed to be angry at, not the individuals doing the killing since the education level is so low in our area, the fishermen have no idea about the damage they’re doing.

I went back to uni and found a supervisor who would support me to go back to Mozambique and work out how bad the shark fishing problem is there. I found Ken Collins, who gave me a lecture slot to the year below where I recruited three research assistants to come and spend four months with me and the fishermen over the summer of my 3rd year to collect data for my 4th year (masters) dissertation. When I was writing up the results for my dissertation back in England they were pretty much what you’d expect in terms of sustainability of shark fishing and the potential negative implications for the local marine ecosystem. However, my stats weren’t significant because I didn’t have enough data which meant I couldn’t publish my paper or do anything about the fishing going on. I began to look at how financially I could continue my data collection and build a team to help out. I started researching NGOs and the conservation volunteering space and that is where Love The Oceans was born from, I founded it November 2014. The sole reason we’re not a charity is that I founded it whilst I was still doing my masters and charities are a load more paperwork than non-profits! I recruited my first batch of volunteers whilst finishing my masters and ran the first programs summer 2015. And the rest, they say, is history…

What are the best things about working in your role?
It’s an incredibly rewarding line of work. Working with the local community is very uplifting and of course I get to scuba dive and snorkel with some truly amazing animals, including whale sharks, humpback whales and manta rays.  I also am continuously keeping up to date with new scientific studies and methodologies which is also exciting. All the research we do is the first of its kind in the area so it’s incredibly satisfying. I find what we do endlessly interesting and I’m never bored.

There are lots of different areas involved in our work so you build a multitude of skills in the field. Since we have zero funding, our motto is always to ‘make a plan’. Something doesn’t work? Make a plan. Car broken down in the middle of nowhere? Make a plan. Ran out of paint? Make a plan. You gain some really great life and survival skills that are incredibly useful in Mozambique but completely useless in a developed country.

We meet a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds and I love inspiring people to get passionate about marine conservation and pursue their dreams. A perk of the job is that I get to live on a beautiful beach for 70% of the year. Pretty cool. I love my job.

What are the biggest challenges you face in your work?
Money. We have none. We’ve been running three years and it’s incredibly difficult to make ends meet in this industry and still be ethical – we don’t want to turn into a money guzzling machine that operates in 100 countries and has no specific goal to achieve. I live in a straw hut in Mozambique and I stay with my parents when I come to England. It sucks not being paid. As a UK company abroad to get anywhere there are a HUGE number of hurdles to overcome to run an organisation – we spend about £4k on insurance alone annually and we can’t even afford to pay our staff, it’s a killer. Hopefully one day soon we can get paid but right now the organisation runs on people’s good wills, family and friends’ support, and most of us have a main job and do LTO tasks on the side. I’m the only full time worker for LTO. But, at the end of the day, I really love what I do and so I don’t mind going without.

In Mozambique we struggle with trying to encourage people to think more sustainably, see the bigger picture, and take action. Women’s place in society is something that we constantly address. Encouraging women to seek careers is something we feel passionately about. Typically in our rural location local women start their periods, get married, have kids and that’s it. Average family size is 10 kids, men can have more than one wife but wives may not have more than one husband. As three women running a conservation organisation it’s tricky, a couple of times I’ve caught a look of complete shock when I’ve done something that typically a woman would never do in their culture, it’s kind of depressing but also fairly entertaining and satisfying to blow stereotypes out of the water.

What top tips would you pass on to a student interested in this type of work?
Don’t go into conservation science if you want to make money. You won’t. Go into conservation science if you’re extremely passionate about what you do. Find a great team to do it with, make sure you get on with your co-workers. Working in a remote region can get pretty intense. If you want to work in the field, make sure you’re OK living without makeup, straighteners or a hairdryer. We’ve been building a magnificent LTO team over the last three years and we’re now at a point where I feel the individuals that make up our team are so awesome that there is nothing we can’t do. Everyone is so passionate about LTO, making a difference and meeting our goals. It’s awesome.

If you’re researching organisations to work with, I would recommend digging. Just digging, digging, digging to get as much info on them as possible and check their ethics. There is SO much legislation in the UK surrounding health and safety abroad but absolutely nothing regarding ethics abroad. Don’t go with organisations that work with animals in captivity, support elephant riding, or let you work for long periods in orphanages. Research the ethics around each activity you’ll be doing. We’ve got some info on ethical volunteering on our website and the questions to be asking if you want more info.

When I look at a volunteer or staff’s application, I immediately first go to their qualifications. If you want to work in science you need a degree. A masters will make you much more desirable, a PhD even more so. After this I look at scuba diving qualifications and the number of logged dives they have. I then go and look at how passionate and enthusiastic they are. We only want the most passionate and enthusiastic individuals working for us. It’s really important to get this across in an application.

Generally, I’d recommend while you’re at University to grab absolutely every opportunity you can. I built up my CV as much as I could before I left uni and then founded my own organisation anyway. I’d really recommend just grabbing life and making every second count.