• Question: Hi Scientists, How could I become a marine scientist and what does a day in the life of a marine scientist ential????????? Thanks

    Asked by adamcarr to Clare, Dave, Glo, Ozge, Sean on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 10 Jun 2011:

      Hi Adam,

      There are many different types of marine scientist, so it really depends on exactly what sort you mean. I’m a physical oceanographer and meteorologist, which means I study the physics (currents, temperature etc.) of the ocean and atmosphere, and how they ‘talk’ to each other.

      When I left school/college I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I was interested in science in general, and maths and physics in particular, so I studied maths at university, thinking that maths is a good thing to have for any type of science. I got into oceanography almost by chance, after finding a funded course that combined maths, physics, computing and oceanography. I’ve never looked back since then, and went straight through to do a phd in oceanography and then got my current research job.

      As for a typical day: usually I’ll be in the office where I’ll be analysing data from equipment that has been moored in the ocean or gathered from research ships. Sometimes, though, I’ll be out on fieldwork, where there isn’t really such a thing as a typical day. Most of my time on my last cruise was spent operating a ‘CTD’ which is a big instrument that is lowered off the side of a ship to the bottom of the ocean and measures the water temperature and saltiness on the way down.

      I’ve also done some aircraft field work, where we were flying between Iceland and Greenland into storms just above the surface of the sea – quite exciting!

    • Photo: Sean Clement

      Sean Clement answered on 10 Jun 2011:

      Hey Adam,

      Like Dave says, there are many types of marine science from marine biology to oceanography and many more. There are almost as many different types of day as well! For instance, someone who is involved in marine technology could spend their entire day helping to design and build ships and oil rigns and other ocean goers but a marine biologist could spend all their day on ship conducting surveys and experiments.

      When I’m in Madagascar, my day is usually split into two with the morning spent diving either training volunteers or doing underwater surveys. The afternoon is when I start to piece together and make sense of all the data we collect. But when I’m in the UK, I’m usually in the office contacting other conservationists and various people we work with both in the UK and abroad amongst other things. Have a guess which type of day I enjoy more!

    • Photo: Ozge Ozkaya

      Ozge Ozkaya answered on 10 Jun 2011:

      I agree with Dave and Sean re-different type pf marine scientists. But generally speaking you would need a degree in Biology? Physics? Mathematics? Chemistry…A science degree basically. Obviously you can then go onto doing a master’s degree and/or a PhD.

      As for the typical day, since there are so many different jobs you can do as a marine scientist let me try to sumarise the day of any marine scientist-this is also almost like trying to define what a scientist is. You would need a hypothesis which generally comes out of previous work for instance done by others so you would need to READ.Then you need to test your hypothesis so you need to do EXPERIMENTS. And for the experiments you need samples or data so you need a FIELD TRIP. Then you need to ANALYSE your results and PUBLISH them. I think this more or less covers it?:)

    • Photo: Gloeta Massie

      Gloeta Massie answered on 11 Jun 2011:

      Hi Adam! I’m going to give you a wee bit different advice than my zone mates and suggest that the best way to become a marine scientist is first and foremost to get yourself down to the nearest sea/ocean and PLAY! Yes, they’re right, you’re going to need to take classes – but it’s a lot easier (and more fun!) to take classes when you can picture the animals in your head because you’ve been seeing them for weeks, months, years, in your ocean playground. Not sure how old you are, but one GREAT program you can get involved in now is Seasearch. (http://www.seasearch.co.uk/) Also, if you’re near any Aquariums, get out and see if you can volunteer. There were teens in the Monterey Bay Aquarium volunteer program who, because of the hands-on training, knew more about the ocean than a lot of undergrads I’ve known. There are things like the Marine Conservation Society’s Beachwatch program (http://www.mcsuk.org/what_we_do/Clean%20seas%20and%20beaches/Beachwatch/Beachwatch), that would get you out and into the sand/surf right away. Plus, there a zillion awesome websites that will help you learn about marine science right now. In fact, I suggest you stop reading my answer for a minute and head over to iTunes University (http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/) to check some of them out now. For example, as a shout out to my current uni, here’s a set of lectures from my school (http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/marine-studies/id431173982). (I’m teaching myself Spanish via iTunes University – not that that’s relevant here – but let me just say – it’s amazing! the resources you can find!) Another spot to try – if you’re feeling really keen – is MIT’s OpenCourseWare program (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/). I can’t heart that enough. (Check out: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/earth-atmospheric-and-planetary-sciences/12-003-atmosphere-ocean-and-climate-dynamics-fall-2008/) In terms of school – if you’re great at math – that’s great (and really helpful). Having said that – I am AWFUL at math – and here I am successful and happy-as-a-bee in my research program. I’m never going to be a quantitative biologist – but – at the end of the day – I’d rather play with animals than numbers! 🙂 My final advice? If someone tells you ‘you can’t’ in terms of the future you want – find a way to make it happen. My high school geometry teacher told me that it wasn’t a realistic expectation for me to want to grow up and be a diving instructor. Ha! If I had listened to her – I’d still be living in landlocked Missouri and not kicking up my heels in Oz.

      About a day in the life – well – it’s 1149pm and I’m writing this – planning my next middle-of-the-night-squid trip. Really depends on what kind of science you do though. 🙂 Whatever career choice you make – remember – you can always be an ocean nerd, even if you’re not a marine scientist!

    • Photo: Clare Woulds

      Clare Woulds answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi Adam

      I think the others have given lots of good advice, so I’ll try not to go on too much. As everyone has said, marine science is a really varied field, so there are lots of different parts of it that you might be interested in. You might get to the end of your degree and discover a whole, new and interesting field that you didn’t know about before. So, I wouldn’t try to pick your specialist subject yet, I would learn about all the bits that interest you now, it will gradually become clear which bit excites you the most. Having said that, some planning is useful. You will need good grades in science and maths subjects at school, and the best way of keeping your options open is to keep studying as many of those subjects as possible. Choose a degree that really interests you, otherwise studying for it will not be fun.

      There are several stages to doing any science research. You have to plan projects, then go and do the field work, then analyse the samples and data, and then tell other people what you have found. Therefore the typical day may involve writing project plans, or figuring out how to get yourself and all your kit to India (for example), or spending many hours or all night sieving mud on a ship (just an example from my work), or carefully doing chemical analyses in a lab, or writing a report, or talking to people at a conference, or even writing this answer to you. So quite varied, you never get bored in this job! I also now teach students at university. The best thing about this type of job is that, although you have a boss, they don’t tell you what to do all the time (they do expect you to work hard though). That means that you can develop the job in a new direction if you like (for example, if there’s a hot new topic for research i can design a project to look at it).

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