An aspiring shark scientist is $3500 richer thanks to a scholarship from an organisation named after another ferocious predator.
Motueka Lions Club’s Charitable Trust Tertiary Scholarship supports second, third-, or fourth-year tertiary students who originated from the Motueka High School zone.
Third-year University of Otago marine studies student Jacob Satherley, and a member of Motueka High School’s class of 2022, pounced on the opportunity offered up by the club to mitigate his education’s financial burden after learning about it from 2024 winner Amber Goodall.
From a pool of 17 applicants, Jacob’s application was “top of the line”.
“Obviously elated, it means a lot to know that people care about what I’m doing,” he says.
“It will relieve the financial stress; it’s just another monkey off your back. It’s a few papers that are covered now that I won’t have to worry about, and that means I can focus on my studies more.”
Jacob says his third-year education-related costs, which include a minor in sport management and development, were $9000 total.
“I would like to work in predator-prey interaction or behavioural study of some sort of marine organism, ideally I’d like to do sharks, why they act like they do in a hunting scenario,” he says.
“Thanks to the Lions, they are the ones that made it happen, and I hope they continue to do it for years to come.”
Scholarship convenor William Mitchell says Jacob’s attitude and ambitions tipped the scales in his favour.
“We just wish him all the very best in his future studies, he’s got an ambition to go further, and that’s what we’ve judged it on,” he says.
