About Marine Impact
Marine Impact was created because the ocean needs more than good intentions. It needs data, sustained over years, collected with scientific rigour, by people who care enough to show up day after day in the field. Our volunteer and internship programmes exist to make that possible.
We place volunteers alongside professional marine scientists in some of the Indian Ocean’s most important and biodiverse marine ecosystems. Every programme we run is built around a defined research objective. Every day in the field produces data that contributes to long-term conservation monitoring. When you join Marine Impact, you are not a tourist with a good story to tell. You are a contributing member of an active research team.
Our scientific foundation
Marine Impact was founded through a partnership between African Impact, one of Africa’s most established and respected conservation volunteer organisations with nearly two decades of operational experience, and leading marine scientists including Dr Gretchen Goodbody-Gringley, a reef ecologist with a PhD from Harvard University and director of the Central Caribbean Marine Institute.
That partnership matters because it means our programmes are not designed backwards from what volunteers want to do. They are designed forwards from what the science requires, and then made accessible to motivated people who want to contribute. The result is fieldwork that produces genuinely valuable research outputs rather than memorable experiences dressed up as conservation.
What we do
We run structured marine research and conservation programmes in three of the Indian Ocean’s most ecologically significant environments. Our field teams conduct reef health monitoring, species population surveys, megafauna tracking, behavioural studies, and long-term ecosystem monitoring. Volunteers work under the supervision of qualified marine biologists and field scientists, contributing to datasets that have been built up over years and that inform real conservation strategy.
Our research focus areas include dolphin population research in Zanzibar, where we have been studying resident spinner and bottlenose dolphin populations continuously since 2013. We conduct sea turtle conservation work across multiple nesting and feeding sites. We run great white shark monitoring in Gansbaai, South Africa, one of the most important great white habitats remaining in the world. And across all our destinations, we contribute to broader marine research including coral reef health surveys, water quality monitoring, and megafauna population tracking.
Where we work
Marine Impact operates in three destinations, each chosen for their conservation importance and the quality of the research partnerships we have developed there.
Zanzibar, Tanzania is our most active destination, with year-round programmes in dolphin research, turtle conservation, and coral reef monitoring. The warm, biodiverse waters of Menai Bay and the surrounding Indian Ocean coast have been our primary research site since the programme launched in 2013 in partnership with the University of Dar es Salaam.
Mozambique is home to some of the most extraordinary megafauna encounters in the Indian Ocean. Our Mozambique programmes are based at Africa’s first permanent marine observatory, in Tofo, where long-term time-series research tracks manta ray and whale shark populations alongside coral reef ecosystem health.
South Africa is where we conduct great white shark research in Gansbaai, one of the highest-density great white habitats in the world. Our research partner has been building a long-term population dataset on these animals that is among the most comprehensive in existence.
Who joins us
Our volunteers and interns come from all over the world and from many different starting points. Gap year students seeking meaningful field experience. University undergraduates in marine biology, ecology, environmental science, or zoology looking for research hours. Career changers using a sabbatical to do something that genuinely matters. Professionals who want to contribute their skills to conservation work in an extraordinary part of the world.
No prior research experience is required for most programmes. What every participant needs is a genuine commitment to the work, the physical willingness to engage in fieldwork, and a basic level of comfort in the water. Full scientific training is provided by our field teams on arrival.
Browse our volunteer programmes and internships, or get in touch if you have questions about which programme is right for you.
