Volunteer Marie Delatour holds a shovelnose sturgeon captured in the Missouri River.

Columbia NFWCO was proud to add its first international volunteer to the staff in January. Marie Delatour hails from Cherbourg, France.

Prior to moving to Missouri, Marie was an associate ecological engineer in the Sustainable Development Section of the Regional Council in Paris. She worked primarily on watershed issues integrating environmental and urbanism factors. She worked with local landowners to encourage land practices to improve water quality in tributaries of the Seine River with the ultimate goal of providing less polluted water to the fountains of Palace of Versailles.

Marie holds two degrees from the University Pierre et Marie Curie. These include an M.A. in Ecology, Biodiversity and Evolution with a specialty in ecological engineering and ecosystems management and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology of Populations and Ecosystems.

Volunteer Marie Delatour holds a shovelnose sturgeon captured in the Missouri River.

Marie is very excited to run nets and lines on the Missouri River to collect sturgeon. While we may worry about how many of our new volunteers will handle the harsh winter sampling conditions, we quickly learned that Marie had experience more daring than any of ours. Marie comes from a long line of fisher folk. Her father is a long-line fisherman in the Channel. Even our “giant” river trawling boats are small in Marie’s experience.

Why would a woman from France travel to central Missouri for field experience? Marie is looking for international experience and wants to improve her English language skills. She shared recently that the ecology job market in France is even worse than here. She was one of 5,000 people who sat for an exam for 14 jobs. And Columbia had one added benefit.