Insider Tips for Building a Career in Marine Science

I wanted to take time out of our regularly scheduled program to talk about careers in marine science and conservation. There have been a lot of you who have reached out to me over the years to talk about careers. How do I get into this career? Do you know of any jobs that are available in this? And where should I begin? And I don't know anybody in the field and so forth. And I wanted to take the time today on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast to be able to reach out

and say, hey, you know what? Here's what I would do if I were to do it all over again. And the reason I'm doing this is because I'm kind of in a period of my life where my daughter wants to become a wildlife biologist. And she's going to take zoology in university. She's about a year out. She's a senior in high school. And we're talking about careers. We're talking about what she needs to be able to do.

And I have some ideas for her based on how things have changed since I started and where I think some things that I've learned and advice that I would like to give her. And I kind of want to shoot it out to you as well, for those of you who are looking for jobs and trying to build a career in marine science and conservation. So with that said, let's start the show and talk about marine careers. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. Now, I am a marine science communicator. That's what I do. I'm a conservation and science communicator. I am a psycommer. That's

what I love to do. I love to talk about the ocean. I love to engage with conversations about the ocean, about climate change, about the issues facing the ocean, like climate change, and being able to give advice on career paths and, you know, where

to find careers. I manage a Facebook group with over 25,000 people where we discuss you know in post conservation jobs and there's talk about conservation and where people should go to get a job in conservation and how they should build up their experience and how they should begin their career really a lot of people are struggling to find jobs after they finish their schooling And it could be for a variety of different reasons. One,

it's just difficult to get a job these days. The job market is not easy in any sort of industry, whether you're looking at science or you're looking at business, it doesn't matter. It's a very difficult industry to break into in general, and then you're adding on to a difficult time to find a job. It

makes it really hard to find jobs. But you want to be able to like the advice I'd like to give you today is just sort of managing your marine conservation career for the long term and understanding that it's not a straight path from school when you decide to become a marine biologist or marine conservationist all the way to the end of

your career. there's going to be times where you're going to meander, there's going to be times where you're going to fall and you're going to take risks and it's going to work out and sometimes it's not going to work out. There's going to be times where you may find a job and you may work in that forever. I highly doubt it, there's going to be a lot of changes but the industry has changed.

for for better or for worse it's changed just like the world changes like the ocean has changed it's evolved and we've seen a lot of different changes from secured government positions to going out on your own and risking um a lot you know risking your lifestyle risking your money for your family and your mortgage and all that kind of stuff so what i want to do is kind of give you a breakdown of what you know, marine science and conservation career looks like, what, how

can it impact your lifestyle, managing risk within that and sort of understanding, you know, what those risks are and how that could affect your life. And also, I want to say this before I really begin is, I'm still going through it, right? I'm 45, I'm going to be turning 46 in a couple of weeks. And it's going to be, you know, I'm still going through it. I haven't figured

out anything. there are a lot of people who give job advice and we're all still just kind of figuring things out and we're sharing our experiences and we're sharing our advice based on what's happened to us and our lifestyle and where we sit you know sort of in lifestyle and you know whether we're middle class lower middle class upper middle class above that whatever that might be I would consider myself middle class at

this point, maybe a little on the upper middle class. I have a very different experience from many of you who may not sit in that category or may not be a white male in this industry. So I'm coming at you from my experience and I'm giving you advice based on my experience and based on the experiences that I've talked to people with and seen them go through.

And also I have another podcast that I co-host called Beyond Jaws where we talk to shark scientists from all over the world and talk about how they work and where they go and what they do in their niche, in their industry, in their field, and be able to be successful. And their success is defined differently. Everybody's success is defined differently. It really comes down to what do you want to accomplish within your career? How

do you want to accomplish it? And how do you want to live through it as a father? Who's giving advice to his daughter who's going into a great 12 in high school? So seniors for a lot of you Americans, you know, she's gonna be a senior and you know looking at where she wants to go, go to university, what type of job she wants to do. As a dad, I always look at, well, what kind of lifestyle do you want? Do you want family? Do you want to be close to family? Do you want to live

around the world? How are you going to do that? Safety, and what kind of jobs you can get. Are they sustainable? Are they something that you can actually build a lifestyle around? The

world is a lot different place than when I started. I bought my house for probably a fraction of what the house is worth today in the place that I in the city that I live today and a lot of cities around the world it's more expensive to live houses and and housing or any kind of residence that you want to buy or rent is extremely expensive now and so a lot of the salaried positions or paid positions within this industry is not that high, hasn't risen to the level where it's considered

to be within par of renting or buying a residence. So as a dad and seeing my daughter graduating into that lifestyle, I worry and I want to make sure that she understands what the risks are and where she can go. And so that will be, it's gonna be an interesting conversation and we're gonna try and figure out together, but I wanted to give you this advice and sort of give you this breakdown of the industry and what you can do with it and how it might affect your lifestyle, where you're coming

from. And I would also love to hear your, before I go into it all, I would love to hear you know, how it's affected you, if you're mid-career, if you're early career, if you're late career, I'd love to hear your stories. You can either DM me or maybe we can do an interview on the podcast and get that experience going. and sharing it with other people. But let's just get into sort of the breakdown. Now, when I first started back in, you know, my university

career started in 1997. So it's been a long time. And I've had, you know, job advice throughout my entire career. But back then, the big push in Canada was to say, hey, we're gonna see a lot of baby boomers start, I'm Generation X, we're gonna see a lot of baby

boomers start to retire soon. So you're graduating at a great time, you're taking school at a great time, because a lot of places in the government, which was like at that time, if you got hired by the government right out of school, you probably had that job or something similar within the government until you retire at the age of 55, which a lot of government employees were retiring at. And we're like, OK, that's great. This is wonderful. Then 2000 hit. And

the stock market crash hit. And the dot-com bubble crash happened. And you're like, oh, OK, not as many people are retiring because their retirement went to crap. And so when I graduated in 2001, there weren't many jobs available.

and you know the internet wasn't as abundant as we had now where jobs are being posted on the internet all the time and you can you know you had like in like indeed.com and all these different job sites where you can apply quickly and LinkedIn and all this kind of stuff it wasn't like that there were jobs being posted but you had to apply like through email or you had to apply you know via like letter sometimes and so that was difficult so the jobs were more regional back

then it was very difficult to get a job if I lived in Canada to get a job in the U.S. although I did eventually find something in the U.S. but I feel as though I lucked out when I first got that first job because the people who I replaced basically quit a week before I called to get hired and had the interview on the spot and was down within a week of that working for about eight months in the ocean. So you know, it's

a very different time right now. And what we've seen, like, you know, I talked about the government jobs, and this was happening at the government level in the US and in Canada, we started to see a switch in the way the government handled hiring people. And what was happening is before, here in Canada, you would get a lot of, you'd get hired as a permanent staff, full-time staffer, and then you would work for, you know, 30, 40 years, and

then you would retire. And the same thing would happen in the US federally. and as well as provincially state and state level. And that was the cream of the crop. If you got to work with government, you got great benefits. You got a great, you were unionized most likely. So you got, you know, vacation and sick leave and dental and health and depending on where

you lived. in which country lived and then it was that was wonderful like that was the time to say hey government job will pay you well you get a pension you know you're you're set up for retirement and everything like that you can retire early at full pension and still be able to consult and do other things and it's it's a wonderful feeling and you and you get to contribute to your you know, a government or, you know, some data and build a program

or continue on a long lasting program and so forth. And that was wonderful. That's changed. That's changed quite a bit. In the US, it's changed into the, sorry, I'll start in Canada. In Canada, it's changed where now they hire you full time, but you're not permanent. You're temporary, right? And so when you get hired as temporary, you basically have maybe a year, a two or three year renewal. So if it's a year, it's an annual renewal. You don't know if you have a job at the end of that

fiscal year. So in federal government, you go from April 1st to March 31st of the next year. And so at the end of that March 31st, you may not know a week before if you have a job or not. You may be signing your paperwork if it's an annual renewal. And people were doing that for 25 years, 30 years, 40 years. They were retiring off of it. They were hired as a temporary full-time staff. Now, they got all the benefits, and they got the pension, and they got everything, but

they never knew if they were going to get hired for the long term. A lot of them that had been there for a long time kind of went through the motions, and it was less risky, but for me as someone who was young, I was like, oh, well, this isn't, I got a family to feed. Like, I need something more permanent. I

would like something more permanent. But what I quickly realized is that, and I worked in the private consulting industry before, that wasn't a permanent thing and the pension wasn't a pension it was you put into a 401k or an rsp if you live in canada and uh you would get a bonus you get paid less to keep your hourly rate down but you get a bigger bonus and so that would go towards retirement and you'd have to almost save for your own retirement now so you're not in a government job

where you have a pension But you have a private job where they're giving you extra money because they're going for profit and they want to keep you around if you're good. And if you're not good, if you don't like you, boom, if you don't get along with others, you're gone or you're laid off because they

don't have enough jobs or you're not billable full time or at the 85% that you want. So doing private consulting or even consulting on your own is a very difficult process because it all depends on how well you can network, how well you can build relationships with clients and have them come back to you for every single project and build that rapport with clients and build that sort of roster of clients so you

continue to have that as you go along. I've tried working for a firm and tried working within there and I've tried working on my own. They're both challenging in their own right. If you go to a private consulting firm and you can bring in jobs, like you're good at doing proposals and looking for grants and money and things like that. then you can succeed quite well. If you're somebody who's depending on other people to get jobs, it really depends on how well you can network within.

And sometimes networking with different scientists and a company managed by scientists is not always easy because what you think you do right is not something that they may like or not. So it's not an easy gig. Plus

you are working for industry. you're working for or you know companies that are could or have a potential doing harm to the environment you're working to make sure that they they work within the regulations and things but There's definitely a Sense and a lot of people get burnt out by the fact like hey I don't really want to be helping these companies pollute more oil and gas mining companies and so forth It's it could be a difficult thing to really think about now You can

work for government as a consultant you can work for all these kind of things that consultant But it's hard to get those jobs and one of the things where I saw that the signs when I was consulting on my own is I got a government contract, it was in marine conservation, it was with mapping, and I was doing really well, and I was really liking it, and then all of a sudden I started to, you know, I tried to apply for another, another sort

of consulting opportunity. They're saying, oh, we can't, the government can't show favoritism towards you again by hiring you twice, even though I was well qualified for the job. it was just the way it went so I was like well you know if I can't get the job based on merit or based on you know they don't want to show favoritism that doesn't leave a

lot of security for me. At the time I had two young kids, I had a mortgage to pay, I had a family to help support with my wife who works thank God and I decided to get out of that business. because it was difficult, because I couldn't really get the contracts that I needed to put in my support of the family at that time. And so that's sort of the nature of private consulting. It's still kind of the same

whether you're on your own or you're with a firm. There could be a lot of money in it for you down the road, but it really depends on what your goal is. You can do a lot of fieldwork or you can do a lot of paperwork. Again, it really depends within private consulting what that goal is. With government, the jobs tend not to change, but you're at the will of the

political party that's in power. So sometimes you'll get a political party that wants to inject money into science and into conservation, and then others you'll get a political party who wants to cut government spending. And so that means they're going to cut support for the public sector, whether it be in science, whether it be in statistics, whether it be just in people power in general.

and they cut things. So I was part in Canada, I was part of a series of layoffs or people being affected at their regular positions because the Conservative government of Canada at the time, led by Prime Minister Harper, wanted to cut stock assessments, wanted to cut the amount of time it took to do environmental assessments. He eventually wanted to cut the Species at Risk Act down so that it wouldn't be as difficult or as long to do an assessment for

oil and gas projects. He got some of that done, but he didn't get all of that done before he got voted out. That wasn't the reason why he got voted out, it was for other reasons. You just never know. You're at the behest of the political group in power for the government. You get to work with some pretty cool people across this industry, but that's sort of the nature of government. So governments change, private consulting kind of stays the same, but it could be difficult. There could be

a lot of challenges of working within that. Now, nonprofit organizations, you can do some great work, some really rewarding work, and you can do some great things. You can travel around the world depending on the organization. However, you're probably not going to get paid a lot. These organizations are led and supported by grant and foundation money which

has changed in their structure in terms of how they give money out. A lot of organizations can only give a certain percentage to overhead which is basically to their staff which is a main portion of their overhead. And so when they get a grant from an organization or a grant from a foundation, then these organizations can only dedicate a certain amount of money towards salaries and

benefits and supporting their staff. So that means the pay is a lot lower because not a lot of those grants and individual donations may not be enough to support the rest. that can be a difficult part. So organizations, a lot of big organizations tend to hire early career researchers because they don't have to pay them as much, but they don't get the same experience, so

they don't get the same data in their documents. That could be a challenge for that organization, plus a challenge for early career or mid or late career scientists and

staff because they may not get paid a lot. you know if they want to stay in a lot of these organizations started forty five thousand dollars u s if that's not a lot of money to support yourself these days you know to buy a house or rent an apartment or do whatever it can be very difficult and i know people who work in the non-profit or organization and they don't have they may not have a lifestyle that you'd expect you know they may not have a house they may not be able to be ready

which is fine there's nothing wrong with that not saying there's anything wrong with that But if people grow up in this industry, I think a lot of times we have this sort of grandioso expectations of what we'd expect to do as a marine conservationist or a marine scientist. And we don't always get that. We don't always see the rewards. And the pay is definitely not up there. We get the rewards of the job. And that's great. But you have to support yourself. You have to have that lifestyle. Some

people will get burnt out. Some people are like, I need to earn money. I need to go out and do stuff. and that's what they'll do eventually, and they'll maybe work in a different industry, and maybe stay on a board of directors, or they'll do something else. Or they'll go on their own and try and consult on their own, which again is challenging, but it's possible. People do this stuff all the time, but not as many people do

it. More and more people are doing it because they can control those things. So there are a lot of things that will help you, or there are a lot of things that are good about every, you know, advantages and disadvantages to every sector, but it can be very difficult to work in that. Non-profit organizations or large organizations or small organizations or medium-sized organizations, what I would say when you look at these organizations, look at how long people stay,

ask them how long people stay. If they stay for a long time,

that means this organization is good to their people. and you know you know 10 years 15 years even over five years is great to see if there's a lot of turnover that means they're you know their their grants may not come in all the time they may have to lay people off at times you don't want to be working for free you want to be working you know for pay and and to work for an organization to volunteer to get experience is one thing but to do that as a long term thing unless you're

a rich billionaire is really difficult to do and be able to eat and be able to survive on your own. I feel like being in marine science and conservation is one of those industries where people, especially early career, including myself, when I was early career and I just got out of school, I'm like, I'll work for free. I'll go out on a boat for free. I'll do that because that looks fun. I can't wait to do that. That's what I've been dreaming about since I

was 14 years old. That's what I've been looking at libraries and just thinking about and visualizing what I can do. And I'll do it for free. I'll do that work for free. I even volunteered to do statistical analysis for free when I was younger. Why? Why would I do that? Because

I loved the job so much. I loved doing it so much and I was so enthusiastic. But the problem is there are organizations out there, there are people out there that will kind of predate on people like that and take advantage of your willingness and passion to do the type of work. So if you're going into a consulting role or you want to do work and get experience, that's one thing. But also understand that you are a professional at this point. If you have a BSC, an undergrad degree

or a graduate degree, then you are a professional. You deserve to be paid. And the more times we start to say, and as a staff, we start to fight back and be like, we need to get paid for this job, this is for a professional, the better it is. When you join my group, Marine Science and Conservation Careers, in the Facebook group, I don't allow, I control all the posts. I do not allow people to post things just based on a volunteership unless I see some sort of mentorship or

internship happen through there. In the U.S. there are specific laws if you advertise for an internship, it either has to be paid or there has to be some sort of mentorship. There's rules and regulations around what you post based on like the Ministry of Labor or the Department of Labor. I'm not too sure the laws there. But that's what it should be. So I'm very particular about the types of jobs

that get posted. Same in my LinkedIn group, my marine biologists group. that jobs group is important for me because i'm like i only want to do was paid positions and if people are putting up the salaries i'll all you know prioritize based on posting you know post that are job posts that have the salaries within it because people need to know what they're applying for not to take my time take two weeks to apply to a job where it's gonna be like

forty five thousand dollars a year i'm sorry forty five years old You know, I have a mortgage. I have kids who are going to university. I have, you know, this is not a time where I can work for $45,000 a year. You know, I need to be able to, you know, make ends meet. I need to be able to help support my family. And that's just the way the reality is of it. So there's certain jobs that I cannot apply for because I need

to know. But I need to know the salaries before I apply to these jobs. Because some of these jobs require a lot of experience, but they only pay under $50,000 a year. And at this point, for me, I mean, for an early career researcher, it might be good. Or early career scientists and conservationists, that might be good. but

for me at this point in my life it's just not that good. So you're adjusting as you grow into the industry, as you start to evolve into the industry and as you get older and your priorities change and you have a family or if you decide to have a family, that's how it's going to change and that's how you need to look at it and look at salary expectations. And the salary expectations not only work for when companies

ask you, but when you ask the companies, like, what do you expect to pay for us? What's the range? More and more companies and organizations are putting up their ranges, which is great to see, but we still need to push for that. As people who are trying to apply to jobs, it should be there. You shouldn't

demand the best of the best at $45,000 a year. You should expect, like, this should be the people we expect, early career scientists, one or two years, out of college or out of university and be able to, you know, have that type of experience and build that type of experience. There's nothing wrong with that. But when you're 45 years old and you've got, you know, 20 some odd years experience in sort of the field, then that salary needs to be upped

and that salary needs to be appropriate for that person with that experience. you know I'm not bringing this to me this is again it's my experience and I wanted to kind of give you that thought process and to give you hey this is your career you do what you want but I want you to really understand sort of the the differences in what is expected not only in a job but in a lifestyle as I mentioned before marine biology and marine conservationists we are very passionate

about the work we'll do. We'll do work for free. We'll do work on top of work, like as volunteers, even though we have a job in marine science and conservation, because we love what we do. We'll have pet projects. We'll always have those projects that we do, whether we're Dr. Andrew Thaler and we get some of that funded through Patreon, or we're just somebody who's just really enthusiastic and has data available and wants to publish a paper on it. We could do that, but you also

have to understand that you have a life beyond work. And there's a huge push with corporate jobs and things like that to understand that you work 9 to 5 or you work certain type of hours. Your off hours should be your hobbies. It shouldn't necessarily be all enthralled in work. I've seen a lot of people get burnt out by the work they do in marine science and conservation. They want to do so much. They want to build their experience, especially when you're young and you want to hustle. That's

fine. You have the energy. You may not have the commitments, the family commitments, or

the financial commitments. And you can take more risks. you know and travel a little bit or or do a volunteership if you can afford it and it's worthwhile or you can move to a different city for a little bit and build a you know life in that city if that's going to be a long-term life or just move for a little bit come back home and go somewhere else that's great that's great that you're able to do that when you're younger but as you grow older you your

your commitments financial and family commitments may change as you go through as you go through life and so you need to realize that you need to realize that there are things And there are things to do and hobbies to have outside of work after that time and to have that break. Everybody needs a break. You can't think about it all the time. No matter who you are and what you think, you're going to need a break at some time. You're going to need to shut your

mind off at some time. And having that downtime with family or with friends or doing a hobby is really great. And it's really helpful for you to be able to do that. and not always worry about money. That's a big thing. I can't stress that enough when I give advice about marine science and conservation careers. That's a huge, huge thing is be able to support yourself in the lifestyle that you want to lead. You might be a minimalist. You might be okay with, you know, renting

apartments. That's great. But just understand that there are different options within the marine science and conservation world, and there are different pay options within that world. And be prepared to take lower than normal salary than a lot of your friends, but also be prepared to have some pretty cool adventures as well. One sector I didn't mention is going the professor route or going the

researcher route within a university. And that will require you to do more graduate work, so a master's and or a PhD, or just a PhD without a master's. That is something that you can do. Be advised. There's going to be a lot more that you have to pay in terms of graduate school. Not only the tuition, but also your lifestyle surrounding that. You still have to live somewhere. You still have to be able to do things. You

know, going to conferences and things like that. If you want to build an academic career, you can do that. And you can become a professor. Just realize that

there aren't as many universities there are marine science and conservationists. And when you go through university, they try and put you through to you know the professor track or the academic track because that's what they know but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to follow that academic career if you want to become a professor you want to try that out that's great go the professor route you know do the phd do the postdoc do another postdoc if you have to stay within that research bounce

out into government and organizations and bounce back in You know, see how you can build up your teaching experience through your graduate work, build your networking opportunities through going to conferences and things like that. It doesn't matter what sector you work on, that's going to be important. But if you want to be that professor, that's great. You can earn a decent salary. Just remember that tenure track professorship has changed. And people who are on tenure track don't always get to

be a tenured professor. So there's not always a guaranteed job if you become an assistant professor or an associate professor. That's not always guaranteed to be full tenure anymore. You don't see that a lot if you see that at all. There's going to be a pressure to do more teaching. And there's going to be a, you know, it's sort of like you become more of a teacher role. In the U.S., a lot of your salary is coming from the grants that you take or

that you get. In Canada, it's a little bit different. I don't know about other countries. So if you're a professor in other countries, I'd love to hear the differences in terms of salary. If you're given like a good base salary and if you are allowed to get money like in the U.S. from grants that you bring in. Universities want to see money coming in. They want to see benefits in terms of products and things

like that. Conservation related material and science related material doesn't always translate into what a dean of that school wants, whether biological sciences or science or marine science or things like that. A lot of the times they want to be able to, this university wants to be able to generate money and revenue more revenue from the products that are made by those professors and

maybe being able to sold. So biotechnology is big. And you'll see a lot of deans really move their science department more towards health sciences than marine sciences because you can publish 80 papers on conservation, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the university likes that because you're not necessarily bringing in a ton of money to that. And part of that is students, graduate students and things like that. But there's this revenue

from products or services that could be generated. So. That's sort of the breakdown of sort of where we're at in today's world from what I know. I would love to know if you have any sort of different experience or perspective. If you wanna come on the podcast and talk about it and share that perspective, that would be great. I would love to have you on. If you wanna just share it in a comment on YouTube or a comment on Spotify or DM me and then you want me to share it, I can share

it or we can have conversations around that. That's gonna be on Instagram, just DM me at howtoprotecttheocean. Also remember that I have an app coming out It's probably going to be pushed to September. I'm working with the company, this is the first time they do this app. It's basically a community app.

What I wanted to do was be able to post everything that I post and all the information that I post in this app so that you don't have to worry about algorithms and not receiving certain information but you get all ocean all the time whenever you go into that app. We'll do an ask me anything type of of sort of services. There'll be some upgraded and premium services and products in there. But it's basically going to be an all you can, you know, for this for this podcast, as well as for Speak Up

for Blue. So it's going to be great. I'm looking forward to it. But be aware that's coming out as well. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo. And I want you to have a great day.