Day in the life of a Marine Biologist & Mum - Meet Finn

We take a minute to catch up with Finn and marvel at how many interesting projects this super-mum has achieved and is working on. From listening to whales communicating under water, working on her camper van conversion, enjoying freediving in hidden coves of the Spanish coastline to juggling being a mother and slowing down her pace of life. We enjoy hearing about her interesting life path and feel inspired to follow our passions in a similar way!

Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you do? What accomplishments have you achieved and what motivates you? 

I'm Finn! Phew that used to be an easy one, I guess now I'm a marine biologist, a sustainability consultant (mostly for tourism and food providers), a writer, a speaker and a content creator. But most importantly I guess I'm a marine mammal and a mom :)

In my 20s my accomplishments and my goals were all work related - I became a bestselling author (for my cookbook) at 27, opened Ireland's first zero waste plant based bakery (Milish - from the Irish word for sweet) at 29 and all the while also worked full time as a marine biologist in marine construction. In my content creator work, I've been super lucky to work with brands like Volvo and Patagonia and write for dream publications like SurfGirl magazine.

Since becoming a mom to my little daughter I feel like that's flipped on its head - I still want to do fulfilling work that I'm passionate about (and has a positive effect on the planet), but those 60+ hour weeks are a thing of the past! For my little girl who's almost 3 I want to model a woman that can have a family and a career, but not a "supermom" or someone that's worked to the bone. 

From all of these amazing and varied achievements, which work project are you most proud of and why?

A bit of all of it really - so much of why there are so many "bits" to my work, is a determination to carve out a living doing all of the things I love (though sometimes all at the same time is a bit much I'll admit!) and often in more unusual or remote parts of the world - be that a little surf town in north west Ireland, or Tenerife or Madeira or now La Herradura a tiny coastal town on the Costa del Sol where we spend a lot of our time.

I've always been conscious that maybe you only get one life, so I'm content that I got to try my hand at writing, having a bakery (a childhood dream), being a biologist, a mom and seeing what it's like to live in different countries and experience different cultures. 

You are true, waterwoman have you always been in love with the ocean?  Were you brought up by the sea and with an ocean loving family?

My family moved a lot when I was little, but were almost always by the sea, some of my addresses were things like Ocean View, Crest of the Wave and simply The Quay. Choosing Earth and Ocean Science as an undergrad was as much about the subject as it was getting to live in Galway -a wonderful coastal city, with some great surf breaks within an hours reach.

Funny though I'd surfed since being a teen and was always in the water as a kid, I didn't become comfortable with open water swimming until my early 30 years after coaching from a dear friend. 

Sustainability is clearly important to you. What in particular has influenced the importance of this to you? 

The biggest impact was learning to surf - it was one thing to learn about marine plastics and poor water quality in lectures, another thing entirely to duck dive and come up with a bin bag over your face or get skin rashes under your wetsuit near outflow pipes.

Now in my science communication work Il try to relate it back to something familiar to the audience - what items in a beach clean did you realise you use in your daily life?

Does your local council issue water quality warnings after periods of heavy rain?

What does that tell you about pollution, or water treatment (or lack of) in your area?

Tell up some top tips that people can adopt to include more sustainability in their lives.

Simplify, simplify, simplify - becoming a parent opened my eyes to the sustainability bubble I was in previously - with my perfectly plastic-free bathroom, mostly packaging free kitchen and ethical & sustainable wardrobe. So much of what I'd achieved (sustainably speaking) was a product of time, money and sleep.

Time to learn about the more sustainable choices, to shop around for them and to prep food (or even cosmetics) from scratch.

Money, though myself and my husband were both self employed for a long time (so both the feast years of doing well and the famine ones when tightening the belts to launch new businesses) - we were still two incomes living in a small rural town, with a low cost of living. A stark contrast to the crazy bills and groceries prices of recent years, combined with the outgoings of a family vs a couple.

Finally sleep. I noticed from pregnancy onwards, how important sleep is. Not just for making healthy choices, but also sustainable ones!

So my answer to this, since depending on circumstances, you might not be able to get more time, money or sleep, is to simply buy less (we now share one vehicle), buy smaller (we shopped for years for a 3-4 bedroom house and are now very content in a 2 bed apartment) and buy second hand where you can (if you don't have time to trawl second hand shops or markets, try apps like Vinted for clothes or Wallapop for home goods). 

Where are you living now? Tell us a bit about where you’re living and talk us through a ‘day in the life’ highlighting your favourite things to do where you live? 

We're between Ireland and the south of Spain. I'll tell you about our Spanish setup, since I'm so buzzed about the little spot we've found! Our place is in La Herradura (it means the horseshoe, named after the shape of the bay), a beautiful beach town on the coast of Granada. Ironically though the climate is very different, the curved bay with mountains at your back and the sea at your door really reminds me of Bundoran, the little surf town in Donegal (Ireland) where we lived for so long.

My ideal day is pretty simple. Mornings start with the buzz of the coffee machine, a doggy walk around the neighbourhood with my 8 year old bulldog Bonnie, usually listening to an audiobook (handy since reading is definitely less frequent with toddler, work and dog!). Then drop the little one to Montesorri.

Lately I've been working out of my campervan (even though I finally made a home office, I get too distracted by the messy house), so I dive to a nearby cove, go for a sneaky freedive (it's more like snorkeling with long fins if I'm honest!) and either work from the camper, a local cafe or the library.

La Herradura and the neighbouring Marina del Este both have marine reserves, so there are tons of fantastic dive spots. I'm taking a freediving course next month (forgot everything from the last one) and can't wait for the opportunity to explore the area a bit more. I was shooting in the water last week with a wonderful photographer and we had to pause for a curious octopus who'd come out of her den and wrapped around my ankle! Then it's school pick up and a bit of down time.

Evenings are usually meeting other friends and their kids either to go to the outdoor pool or to the beach. I'm so lucky that my daughter is a water baby too! She loves to spend hours on end in the sea, came along for a SUP with me last month and hopefully we'll get to Cadiz this summer so she can try surfing. 

Finn wearing her Ocean Boheme wave bracelet while working in her camper van

You seem to always have lots of interesting things going on, tell us what current projects you have at the moment?

Now that my little one is almost 3, I feel like we're really getting a sense of ourselves back, my husband is back playing music and I'm hoping to get back into marine science properly - I've only worked remote/done consultancy since my daughter was born. Something mega exciting is heading to the Azores this week for a marine mammal observer (MMO) and passive acoustic operator (PAM) training course. I worked for many years as an MMO and it has always been a dream to add PAM certification. Essentially it's learning to use hydrophones (underwater microphones) to record whale songs/sounds, to identify the different species. I can't convey in type how stoked I am at the prospect of potentially seeing and listening to blue and sperm whales and maybe even orca off a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic!!

With so many projects and mum duties, what do you do to relax and have some ‘you time’? 

I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that "core" parts of myself in my 20s (ie marine science and surfing) don't have to define me for the rest of my life.

So I'm now having a go at being a complete kook again, in as many areas as possible - like taking up MMA (getting punched in the face is not as bad as I'd imagined), learning to skate (much scarier than I'd imagined) and snowboarding (like who knew you could have this much fun as an adult?).

We are phenomenally lucky here in La Herradura, there's a brand new skate park for me to go humiliate myself in just 20 mins away (and it's free) and the Sierra Nevada snow resort is only an hours drive. 

As a marine biologist is there anything you wish more people knew about or cared about?

Noise pollution! The topics of marine plastics, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, they're huge, global and highly complex. I find noise pollution sort of fascinating as a topic, as when the source is stopped, the bulk of the problem is gone. Of course there's more nuance than that, but it's been fascinating to read studies about it across a wide range of industries, from shipping to offshore exploration, to the development of "silent" whale watching boats. It's something so tangible to fight against as a conservationist for example military sonar use is a major cause of mass strandings (and mortalities) in cetaceans, a few years back in Ireland (I think around 2020 or 2021) there was huge pressure put on the government for an international military exercise to be pushed out from the shelves edge (where many whale species come to feed) and it worked! 

Tells us where people can follow along and watch your projects progress?

My website is mostly the place to find me for my sustainable consulting work www.finnvanderaar.com but Instagram - @finnvanderaar (formerly saltwaterstories) is probably the best one-stop-shop to follow along, it's where I'll be sharing everything for the upcoming Azores trip, freediving course next month and just general ocean adventures and sustainable living bits.