On the Job: Sean Anjelo Maluchluw, BS ’27

Sean Anjelo Maluchluw, BS ’27 a junior international relations major, had the opportunity to intern under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), conducting ocean mapping in his home country, the Republic of Palau. Wanting to spend his summer outside of an office building, Maluchluw found out about the internship through the Palau Aquarium’s Facebook page and applied. His role included sailing in the Okeanos Explorer research vessel and mapping unexplored parts of the West Pacific region down to 5,000 meters in depth. Additionally, Maluchluw collected water samples, carefully filtered them, and sent them to the labs at Stanford University for further analysis to discover what types of deep-sea organisms were found at these depths.

The Role:

Junior Regional Advisor/Guest Scientist

Describe your internship in three emojis:

🌊 (ocean wave)

🧬 (DNA strand)

 ⛴️ (boat)

The Day-to-Day:

It’s usually the same every day where I collect ocean samples (eDNA) from the ocean's surface and even as deep as 4, 000 meters, filter them/send them to the lab for processing. I also filter the samples (eDNA) and clean up bathymetric data (maps generated live from the sea floor).

Go-to snack or drink that gets you through the day:

A lot of fruit-flavored electrolytes and a bag of popcorn

My I “nailed it” moment:

Making my first map of my country, Palau, in ArcGIS Pro, a desktop global information systems software

Favorite part of your role:

Working with my colleagues and overall interacting with other scientists aboard

Fit check:

Tips for the next intern:

Get ready and excited to learn a lot about GIS and mapping data, as well as get used to sailing in the middle of the ocean for weeks!