She Slept in a Tent on a Remote Island to Monitor Killer Whales. Later She Released Seals Back Into the Wild.

There is a version of a veterinary career that does not involve an exam room, a waiting room, or a schedule booked six weeks out. It involves tents, hydrophones, remote cameras, the North Sea at dawn, and the specific feeling of watching a rehabilitated seal disappear into the water and knowing, with certainty, that your work made that moment possible.

Dr. Helena is living that version.

She was a veterinary intern at the Sealcentre at the World Heritage Centre Wadden Sea in Lauwersoog, Netherlands, one of the most important marine mammal rehabilitation facilities in Europe. She has worked with seal populations and whales and dolphins, too, in Portugal. She spent two months on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia sleeping in a tent and monitoring northern resident killer whales with some of the most dedicated marine mammal researchers on the planet. She graduated from Freie Universität Berlin with her veterinary degree after seven years of training and immediately turned toward the water.

She has not made her first dollar yet, she will tell you with a frankness that is genuinely refreshing. But she is building something that money cannot easily measure.

The Book That Changed Everything

Helena was not always headed toward veterinary medicine. She was headed toward marine biology, and the pivot she made eventually landed her in the same ocean by a different route.

The book that redirected her was Listening to Whales by Alexandra Morton. Morton is a researcher and activist who spent decades studying orca communication in the waters of British Columbia, Canada, and whose work and advocacy on behalf of the whales of the Pacific Northwest has been as relentless as it has been consequential.

Dr. Helena says. ‘”I wanted to study marine biology but looking into the job possibilities it looked impossible to get to work in the field and not just end up in a lab somewhere. Still wanting to work with animals I started studying veterinary medicine. But my heart took me back the ocean and I ended up working in the field that in the beginning I thought would never be possible.”

She found her way back through commitment that most people would find difficult to sustain. Volunteering projects and internships, often unpaid or minimally compensated, in Portugal, Cyprus, Canada, and Germany. Student employee work at a small animal specialty clinic in Berlin for more than four years, building the practical clinical foundation that wildlife medicine requires even when the patients are not dogs and cats. A research assistantship with AIMM Portugal, an organization studying Atlantic bottlenose dolphins and other marine mammals along the Algarve coast, that she pursued immediately after finishing her degree.

Her advice to anyone who wants to follow a similar path is direct and specific. Going into the field, doing volunteering projects and internships is more important than good grades at university if you want to be a wildlife vet. It really is about the experience you have.

Two Months on Hanson Island

The experience Helena describes most vividly happened in the summer of 2022, before she had her degree, when she spent two months as a volunteer at OrcaLab on Hanson Island, British Columbia, Canada.

OrcaLab is a remote field station established by Paul Spong and Helena Symonds, dedicated to the long-term, non-invasive study of northern resident killer whales. The station runs continuously. The monitoring never stops. The work is real and unglamorous and completely extraordinary.

Helena slept in a tent for two months. She worked alongside Spong and Symonds monitoring the northern resident killer whale population through the summer months using hydrophones and remote underwater and above-water cameras. She tracked their activity and behavior. She was present for one of the most beautiful and scientifically important stretches of coastline on the planet, doing the kind of sustained, careful observational work that forms the foundation of everything marine mammal science knows.

"I have never seen nature this beautiful and never felt so connected to the ocean," she says.

That connection is not incidental to her veterinary career. It is the foundation of it. A wildlife veterinarian who has no relationship with the environment the animals inhabit is a clinician working without context. Helena is building the context first and the clinical skills around it.

What Seal Vet Life Is Actually Like

The Sealcentre at the Wadden Sea takes in injured, sick, and orphaned seals, rehabilitates them, and returns them to the wild. The Wadden Sea itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the largest tidal flat systems in the world, and home to significant populations of harbor seals and gray seals. The work Helena does there is not zoo medicine and it is not companion animal medicine. It is rehabilitation medicine with a conservation mission and a population-level purpose.

"After working one year as a seal vet I can say it is amazing working with wild animals, marine mammals in particular," she says. "Seals are fascinating and so diverse and curious, you can really tell their characters. Also your work can really make a difference for the population and the environment."

The individual animal and the species are not separate in wildlife medicine the way they can sometimes feel separate in other contexts. The seal Helena treats today is part of a population whose health reflects the health of the ecosystem it inhabits. The Wadden Sea is both a protected area and a working system, affected by fishing pressure, boat traffic, pollution, and climate-driven changes in prey availability. The seal on the treatment table is a data point in a much larger picture, and the veterinarian is both clinician and ecologist simultaneously.

The moment she describes as the most extraordinary feeling in her entire career is the release. Watching a rehabilitated animal that came in sick or injured disappear back into the water and return to its life. That is the specific payoff of rehabilitation medicine, the moment when the clinical work becomes something else entirely.

The Hard Parts Nobody Talks About Enough

Helena is honest about the parts of wildlife medicine that the Instagram posts do not capture.

The most agonizing professional decision she has made so far was choosing to take a break from marine mammals, to spend time at home with friends and family. That choice, which sounds simple from the outside, is genuinely costly in a field where presence and continuity matter enormously. Wildlife medicine runs on networks built through time in the field. Taking yourself out of the field, even temporarily and for entirely valid reasons, means stepping back from a pipeline that does not pause while you are away. She made the choice anyway.

The biggest structural problem she identifies in wildlife medicine is not a clinical one. It is financial. Getting funds for medical work and for research, which in her view should go hand in hand, is consistently difficult. Projects run on volunteers and just a few paid employees. The gap between the quality of the science being done and the compensation available to the people doing it is one of the defining tensions of the field.

Her first dollar is still theoretical. That is the reality of a career path that prioritizes experience and mission overcompensation, at least in the early stages. It is a choice made consciously by the people who make it, and Helena has made it repeatedly and without apparent regret.

What Comes Next

In five years Helena wants to be working half time in a clinical setting to continue building her practical skills while supporting wildlife projects throughout the year. She hopes to be finished with or deep into a PhD on marine mammals. The research and the medicine, together, as they should be.

Her mission is clear and it has not wavered. She wants to keep working in wildlife projects, learning and practicing as a wildlife vet. She wants to help make a difference and raise awareness for wildlife that depends on the health of systems humans are actively degrading.

The person she admires most is Alexandra Morton, whose book sent her down this path in the first place. What Helena admires about Morton is what she is building herself: the capacity to fully commit to a cause and give everything else for it. She calls it very hard to do. She is doing it anyway.

She wants to see marine protected areas expand. She wants reduced fishing pressure and reduced boat traffic in critical habitats. She has watched the data on what happens when protected areas are given space to recover, and she believes there is still time to turn things around. Not easily. Not without effort. But still.

In Her Own Words

On what makes seal vet life worth it: "Releasing a seal back into the wild after a rehabilitation process is the most amazing feeling ever."

On her hero: "Alexandra Morton, for all the work, research and activism she has done for the waters of British Columbia, Canada."

On advice for her younger self: "Hold on to big dreams, because you can actually make them happen if you really want to."

On purpose: "With a purpose in life you just know why and what you do it for. It gives life direction and makes it easier to follow a path, even if it is not always clear."

Dr. Helena was  a veterinary intern at the Sealcentre, World Heritage Centre Wadden Sea, Lauwersoog, Netherlands. She holds her veterinary degree from Freie Universität Berlin. Vet Candy profiles the people building careers the profession needs. myvetcandy.com