Origin Story
blog ·Not all heroes wear capes. Not all marine biologists wear SCUBA
… but I do that too. This post is about why. Why start KnowOcean.org? As I look back on my career and all of the ad hoc mentoring and advice I have given over several decades, I realize 2 things:
- I was lucky to fall into all the wonderful experiences I had
- It sure would have been nice to have someone give me all of that advice
Now I checked online to see if any marine biology samaritans had already taken care of you, but what I found was mostly aspiring influencers or people who had landed unicorn jobs giving pep talks.
Here’s my pep talk: most of you likely won’t become marine biologists. And that is spectacular! Don’t get me wrong, I wish everyone could make a career out of this, but I truly believe that the path of striving to achieve this career is a lifelong enrichment by itself.
One of the things I have loved most about my career in marine biology is the diversity of experience it requires. I believe that this path involves almost every subject we all were forced to take in high school (thus addressing the adolescent complaint of taking a class that will never be used):
- Biology: duh…
- English: not just communicating research and writing papers, but reading/conducting literature reviews
- Math: yep, hate to break it to you… all real marine biology involves math at some level
- History/Civics: the most consistent marine biology jobs out there are state and federal, so understanding the funding sources and their governmental purposes can be important
- Physical Education: most marine biology data collection is ridiculously labor intensive