Under the sea

Doctor, police officer, archaeologist, teacher: children want to grow up to be all these things, often all at the same time. Career choices of the very young vary according to what they find fascinating at the time. Archaeologists were big news when I was growing up, around the Pleistocene era. Every second person under 10 knew more about dinosaurs than your average college graduate. More children could pronounce “Pachycephalosaurus” and “paleolithic” rather than “rhinoceros” and “industrial”. Marine biology was also big, as stories broke about dolphins caught in tuna nets. The imminent extinction of all whales was the hot subject of the time.

Whales are still in danger all over the world and dolphins are still being caught in tuna nets. Of the dozen or so kids I knew who wanted to be marine biologists, about the most exciting career path actually taken has been in television editing and producing. What happened to all of the budding conservationists?

Marine biology, like all things in life, is far grittier in reality than fantasy. There were many dreams of swimming with whales, sharks and immensely poisonous jellyfish. The conscientious may dream of creating a miraculous and foolproof method of fishing that avoids dolphins and porpoises, and of turning back the tide on all endangered species from whales to coral. All dreams, however, vanish in the light of research, paperwork, and angry trawling companies all rushing to meet their quotas regardless of the age, size and species of what gets caught.

The work is hard, it can be dirty, smelly and very physically taxing, and given human resistance towards changing behaviours, attitudes and habits, it can also be very unrewarding.

So why do it?

Passion. When you’re passionate about something, external rewards don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter all that much. You work for the love of it. In marine biology that means that you’re working to amass information that could prove important in the lives of all beings, not only those under the sea. It also means that you strive to educate those around you about creatures that are, quite frankly, creepy looking. Making the unknown known minimises the creepy factor and generally helps us to view misunderstood creatures in a far friendlier, more sympathetic light.

Marine biologists and The Discovery channel have done a lot for the reputation of sharks, for example. They’ve been transformed from vicious and random killers that need to be exterminated on sight, to … Well, the point is that they don’t kill randomly and are only vicious when provoked and shouldn’t be exterminated just on principle. The Discovery channel said so.

Hope is another important reason for carrying on in an unrewarding job. There is always the hope that what you do will someday make a difference, even if it’s only a small one.

Championing a cause is also a good reason to carry on in the face of great adversity. Someone has to keep documenting the unnecessary killing of whales so that when they are all extinct, a paper trail exists that will point very damning fingers at the perpetrators.

I think that the most important reason, however, is personal gratification. Marine biologists get to spend time at coral reefs, and with shoals of fascinating and beautiful fish, not-so malicious sharks, and gentle whales. People pay a great deal of money for underwater adventures that are half as genuine as the ones you as a marine biologist can experience. That alone must be worth thirty years of campaigning for grant money and the ensuing paperwork.

Recommended sites:

http://www.aza.org/ForEveryone/Careers/

http://www.stsd.org/sms/staff/lfuinihetten/ocean/day.htm

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HUV/is_1_33/ai_n6174062/pg_3

Sandra wrote this article for the online marketers Employers Jobs work opportunities and vacancies one of the leading site directories for information on work opportunities and job vacancies, as well as developing trends in the professional world.