Few questions for marine biologists

[saltwater4life1]

Hi,

I'm going to be in 10th grade this year and i'm starting to think about what i want to do. I'm home schooled so i can work fish stuff into just about anything and I've been thinking about being a marine biologist. So i am just wondering the following questions.
What are some good colleges? (I've Google a few)
Where do you live?
What do you do? (Job wise)
What do you make?(Like do you need another job to pay for stuff)

Thank you very much!!!

Nick

 

[Steven0000]

Im pretty sure marine biologists don't make much
unless you work for a major corporation
so you are pretty much doing it because you love it

probably not the best job to support a family

 

[SDhky]

out of 300 marine biologists who graduate with a degree, maybe 1 finds a job, the others usually go back to college for a different degree. theres no money in it and extremely hard to find jobs. Consider biochemistry instead, you can find marine science in biochem and lots of money involved

 

[saltwater4life1]

Thanks,
That's what i was wondering. Because i don't want my wife to have to work just to put food on the table...

Edit,
Wow... 1 out of 300... that's gotta suck... I mean i love fish and sharks and everything else but i also gotta beable to buy a house and stuff... hmm biochemistry never though of that.

 

[A Reef Scene]

I'm not a marine biologist but a person who loves animals. With a marine bio degree you have the ability to work at any aquarium in the world. If you check the aza.org web site you can see what the zoo's and the aquariums are looking for in a staff member. You might also want to volunteer at the local zoo or aquarium. As far as pay, I do what I do for the love of being with the animals. I hope this helps you.

 

[SDguy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10470177#post10470177 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SDhky
Consider biochemistry instead...

I'll second that!

 

[buildinboats]

I second SDhky. I got a marine bio degree back in 1975. The job market then was slim pickings. A handfull of my classmates went on to grad school, and eventually either became teachers, professors or did research for the government. Not exactly the jobs we had pictured ourselfs in after college. We all wanted to be like Jacques Cousteau!

 

[A Reef Scene]

Befor you get down check the aza web site

 

[SDhky]

SDguy, I assume you are a biochemist in san diego? Im studying biochemistry at SDSU, what kind of job do you have right now?

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

Well, I'm starting University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the fall, majoring in marine biology. Not exciting to hear that most dont find jobs, but I'm confident I'll find something.

 

[SDguy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10470623#post10470623 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SDhky
SDguy, I assume you are a biochemist in san diego? Im studying biochemistry at SDSU, what kind of job do you have right now?

Autoimmune diagnostic development at a private company.

 

[siropa]

This was probably 12-13 years ago for a point of reference. My wife got a BS in biology. She wanted to get her masters in marine biology and we took a tour out east at some schools and even got a behind the scenes tour at the Baltimore aquarium. She would have loved it if she could have landed a job at a place like that, but the reality set in that there are so few jobs like that that its darn near impossible to really end up doing it. She is just a plain old scientist now doing product R&D. For her it was never about the money, because it would have been find to get paid in scraps for how much she would have loved that job, but the limited opportunities.

 

[gregg@AMS]

nick,
it can be tough to get a good job in marine bio. most jobs are research oriented, and they do not pay well (typically).

the route i took was to study zoology, and my concetration was zoo and aquarium sciences. there is a much higher demand for staffing by the many new zoos and especially public aquariums not only in the US, but abroad as well.

like marine bio, its a labor of love, but it is much easier to find a job, and oftentimes it is working directly with the specific organisms you love rather than spending 9 months at a time researching snail breeding behaviors.

i went to michigan state university, which has one of the best zoology and vet med programs in the country. dr. snider was my advisor, and if you would like info, you can email him at snider@msu.edu. i would also check out http://www.aza.org.

good luck.

 

[corbett_n]

I am a marine biologist in SC and have been for a few years now. I work with plenty of poeple who have marine and just regular biology degrees. Don't listen to all these people saying 1 in 300 can only find jobs. You can get a job anywhere you just have to pay your dues. The best thing you can do in college is volunteer to go out with people and get as much experience as possible. Most department of natural resources don't really care if you have a master's degree or not, some even prefer you not. I hire for lots of jobs where we turn down people with Master's degree because they don't have any real world experience and we have many problems with them not listening how to conduct a project because they think they know everything because they completed there thesis. As far as pay goes, SC is one of the lowest. I make around $28,000 which I can live on. A good school is College of Charleston in SC and UNC Wilmington. I work with sturgeon and I couldn't hitnk of having a better job. Don't let people deter from a rewarding career where you actually make an impact. I know poeple who work in public aquariums and it isn't that great, all you do is clean ,feed and kill fish. Aquariums havee big turnover rates of fish. Hope this helps

 

[spartacusFL]

I graduated with a marine biology degree in '98. It can very hard to find a job w/o any experience and money will never be very good. I got a job in the environmental consulting buisness and did that pretty successfully for 8yrs. Then one of my clients offered me a job so now I am a development manager for a real estate and development company.

 

[gregg@AMS]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10472682#post10472682 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by corbett_n
I am a marine biologist in SC and have been for a few years now. I work with plenty of poeple who have marine and just regular biology degrees. Don't listen to all these people saying 1 in 300 can only find jobs. You can get a job anywhere you just have to pay your dues. The best thing you can do in college is volunteer to go out with people and get as much experience as possible. Most department of natural resources don't really care if you have a master's degree or not, some even prefer you not. I hire for lots of jobs where we turn down people with Master's degree because they don't have any real world experience and we have many problems with them not listening how to conduct a project because they think they know everything because they completed there thesis. As far as pay goes, SC is one of the lowest. I make around $28,000 which I can live on. A good school is College of Charleston in SC and UNC Wilmington. I work with sturgeon and I couldn't hitnk of having a better job. Don't let people deter from a rewarding career where you actually make an impact. I know poeple who work in public aquariums and it isn't that great, all you do is clean ,feed and kill fish. Aquariums havee big turnover rates of fish. Hope this helps

i would agree with most of this. probably the most important thing to do, once you're in a program, is volunteer, make contacts, etc, not only for the experience but the network as well. and to that end, the mot important thing you can do is pick an internship which is as close to what you want to do as you can find, hopefully with a firm or dpartment you would want to work for, and go in there and do the best you can do.

a lot of people screw up b/c they do their internship half-heartedly, and then they don't make any kind of impression on the people they need to be impressing, so when its time to find a job, they've already put themselves in a hole.

do your internship, take it seriously (even though you probably won't get paid), and do the best job you can do while making as many contacts as you can.

also, there is money to be made if you pursue it to the doctorate level, either as a curator of a zoo/aquarium, research director, or, if you're lucky, college professor.

 

[InLimbo87]

Like others have said, it takes true dedication and love for what you do to really make it in the Marine Biology world. Its a job that you definitely can't expect to fall into right after college (after all I believe half of my managers at a retail pet store had biology or marine biology degrees).

If its something you're truly passionate about, then go for it.

 

[greenbean36191]

This thread may help.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1154773&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

 

[coralite]

I am a marine scientist and I graduated from the U of SC a little over a year ago. I have yet to find a career job but that is for suckers anyway. When I went to carolina, I was involved in everything I could get my hands into from the aquarium world, to research to diving. Since then I have worked in all three fields and I must say that it has been a lot of fun. My first job right after graduation was being a coral spawning research diver through UNC wilmington. I wrote an article for Reefkeeping about it here.here
I can't say that I've made a ton of money yet but I have had many priceless experiences. If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life. If you are really passionate about it then marine science is for you. Carolina and UNCW are both great programs, so is miami and FIT. DOnt hesitate to ask follow up questions, hope this helps a bit.

 

[coralite]

While I am thinking about it, you should sign up for the Coral-List
it frequently has job listings for coral related work all over the world, anywhere from intern positions to post doctoral positions. It is a very valuable tool for staying informed as to what goes on in the wolrd of coral research.