Andrew McIntyre
To provide some background about myself I was born and raised in Virginia
Beach right on the oceanfront. I grew up enjoying the ocean from an early age learning to
surf, fish, and swim like most of the people in my neighborhood. That was my first
introduction to the outdoors and ever since I keep trying to expand my knowledge of
natural world and most of my hobbies up to this point complement that desire to get up
and see what’s out there. In high school I was a nationally ranked swimmer, which led
me to become a beach lifeguard for close to a decade. In addition to that I’m a
recreational scuba diver and spear fisherman, hunter, backcountry hiker, amateur
mountaineer, and traveler. If I went back through my family tree for the last two hundred
years there has always been a McIntyre sailing or wandering through some far flung
territory and I guess it no surprise that I would want to do the same thing. Where I like to
think I differ from those in my family who came before me is that instead of just wanting
to cross an ocean or the next mountain range I want to understand everything about
where I am traveling from the flora and fauna to the different cultures.
To answer the question of how I got to where I am today I would have to start
with my parents. My father was an extremely gifted merchant marine engineer, and my
mother a respected pediatrician. They wanted to provide my sisters I with whatever we
needed to grow and find out what really interested us. It was my father especially who
recognized that I much like himself was very inquisitive and sought out knowledge just
for the sake of knowing. While his pursuit of knowledge usually focused on how various
machines functioned mine were more centered upon the natural world. Luckily my dad
wasn’t the type to discourage my interests simply because they weren’t his own and he
always found ways to combine our different interests into hobbies that we could both
enjoy. Chief among these hobbies were hunting and fishing, because both sports required
us to learn how to use and maintain a vast array of gear and machines. More importantly
to be a good hunter and increase your success in the field you have know about what
you’re hunting and the environment that you’re in, and this was where I excelled.
Together my dad and I made a pretty good team, and in our pursuit of game we learned
about ourselves and the world around us.
As I started to approach college I knew I need to figure out what I was going to do
with my life but I didn’t and still don’t really know how to turn my love of the outdoors
into a career. I made a good start at achieving my goal by enrolling in the environmental
studies program at UVA and graduating with a somewhat decent record. At college I
also learned the importance of my inquisitive nature; that it was the foundation of what
could some day make me a good scientist. Also in my free time I had a lot of amazing
experiences. Besides the typical great times spent drinking with friends at college what I
remember best is all the free time that I had to travel. Besides various hikes and hunts in
Virginia I got to backpack for a month through Yellowstone and crossed a mountain
range and glaciers in British Colombia. I went to Belize and Guatemala twice and visited
various ruins and spearfished a variety of reefs. What really made my trips different from
the average tourist was that I would spend months researching the locations. Not just
hotels and where to eat, but the culture, wildlife, and history of each place. After each
experience I just wanted to see and do more, but I wasn’t really planning ahead or
budgeting for my future.
During my senior year at UVA I knew I wasn’t ready for graduate school so I
applied for a research opportunity in Equatorial Guinea studying sea turtles nesting
ecology to gain some practical field research experience. It started in October 2013 so I
also decided to spend the last of my money and travel around the world after graduation
before it started. In May 2013 a buddy and I headed to South Africa then to Turkey and
finally through most of Eastern Europe. All of the wild stuff that you think could happen
to two college aged Americans on trip around the world did happen. I don’t really want to
elaborate further but I will say I’ve got more than few stories to tell. Needless to say
when I got back home in August 2013 I was pretty worn out. I didn’t have time to
address many of the issues that were going through my mind, the first of which was that I
was once again not really planning for my future; I was going back to Africa for eight
months.
Equatorial Guinea is one those bizarre twisted little backwaters of the world that
few visit unless they are born there or work in the oil industry. It’s amazing and horrible
all once and every day there is surprise. I went to the island of Bioko with an NGO called
the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program (BBPP) to study the island’s nesting turtle
populations on a remote expanse of beaches on the island’s southern end. I spent the next
six months living in a hammock on a black sand beach eating mostly rice and beans,
while myself and a team of seven others counted leatherback nesting sites and filmed
primates. To be cliché it was the best of times and the worst times. Some of the main
points I learned from my time there is that it’s a big challenge to work with people from
different cultures and backgrounds and it can be agonizingly frustrating when it goes
wrong and extremely rewarding when it works well. This is all even truer when you are
working in a remote environment with few modern conveniences or outside support. Also
don’t light yourself on fire by accident, and finally tropical rainforests are rough on
equipment, the body, and the mind.
When I got home to Virginia again in April 2014, I was pretty shaken up. I
needed to get a life plan together fast and adjust back to normal life. I life guarded again
until the end of the summer and started to make plans. I knew I needed to further my
education if I was ever going to have a decent career so I found a job, moved to
Richmond, and got into VCU.