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General Description

This is an ideal career for an intuitive thinker. As a marine biologist, your job can vary from studying, observing, and protecting, to actually managing marine plants or animals. Your studies can include examination of the origin, structure, habitat, function and behaviour of life in the ocean, rivers or estuaries.

Career Advice - Marine Biologist Career

Your studies can include examination of the origin, structure, habitat, function and behaviour of life in the ocean, rivers or estuaries. Your job will often involve developing a research question, and then designing and undertaking an experiment that will enable you to answer that question. This can require fieldwork, research or work in a laboratory. 

A common misconception of a marine biologist’s life is that you get to swim with dolphins and whales on a regular basis. In truth, you would have to be extremely lucky to get this job. You will instead be expected to work long hours in a laboratory or an office while undertaking research, or working for extended periods at sea or in shore-based field stations.  Qualifying as a marine biologist also opens the pathway to natural resource management positions both in government departments and in the marine industry.

It is a competitive field, and you will often rely on grants to undertake your research. 

What you do every day

Your daily activities are determined by your area of specialisation. Some of the possibilities are:

• Developing environmental impact assessments to find out whether change is caused by natural or human factors;
• developing programs for monitoring environmental pollution;
• studying the structure of communities of marine life and determining the factors that influence them;
• collecting and dissecting marine specimens and examining them under microscopes; or
• managing fisheries.

Away from fieldwork, you may be:

• using your mathematic and scientific skills to design laboratory and field experiments
• providing information and suggestions for developing marine conservation and harvesting policies;
• writing research reports and general information for a range of audiences;
• giving advice to politicians, primary producers, health care workers and the public; or
• training students wanting to enter the field.

However, no matter what tasks you do or the environment you work in, your job will always relate to the study and likely protection of marine organisms.

Personality that best fits this career

Marine biologists must have an interest in the sea and its creatures. You should be good at science, but this won’t be enough without a talent for research, an inquisitive/intuitive mind, and the ability to identify problems. You also need strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

Good verbal and written communication skills are necessary. You use these to write and present your reports after completing research, as well as during your fieldwork. Marine biology may have you spending weeks at a time on a boat with a group of people, and communication skills will be vital to surviving this experience. These research endeavours also make it important for you to be able to work as part of a team.

The work of marine biologists can be very demanding. You will need to be in good physical condition to cope with the labours of fieldwork, including scuba diving. It will often be necessary for you to spend time away from home while out collecting information, so a willingness to travel is also important.

Best thing about this career

Being a marine biologist is a rewarding occupation. There will be times when you spend weeks and weeks working on a research project, observing, studying, analysing and experimenting. When all of your hard work pays off, and brings you to an informative, productive or influential conclusion, you are rewarded with a strong sense of job satisfaction. Due to your work, you can improve the state of the sea for marine life. As an active researcher you will also engage with international colleagues.

You are unlikely to be bored, considering the immense and ever-changing subject matter. You can also travel, often to fascinating and lovely places. Not to mention that being able to go diving and submerge down into the marine atmosphere can be an amazing and life changing experience.

Worst thing about this career

You will often feel like there is not enough time to get your work done to meet deadlines. This pressure is increased by your reliance on accurately collected data, and the cooperation of marine life. Your work can be delayed by bad weather conditions, an incorrect sample or accidental miscalculations.

There will be times when you slave away at a study, only to conclude that the sample was bad, or your analysis took you in the wrong direction and you need to begin research from scratch. Much of your research will often rely on grant funding, which is very competitive and difficult to secure.