D
o you like being on or near the water? Do you like boats and ships? How about marine animals? There are hundreds of careers today that involve working with and studying our oceans and waterways, ships and boats, and everything having to do with both. From science to history and literature, from archaeology to geology, architecture to becoming a ship's captain, there are many, many ways to work in this field, have some fun doing it, and make a difference to our environment, our economy, and people's understanding of our long traditions of working at sea. Many job tides that you'd expect to be solely land-based jobs have some equivalent in the marine field. For example, an architect designs buildings, while a naval architect designs watercraft; there are maritime lawyers, marine artists, marine geologists, nautical archaeologists ... the list goes on and on. In the next several issues of Sea History, we'll meet some individuals who work in the marine/maritime field and learn about what they do. In this issue, let's meet a marine biologist. "Marine biologist" is a broad title covering many jobs that study the marine ecosystem, which includes all our oceans and other aquatic environments, such as estuaries (wide body of water formed where a large river meets the sea that contains both fresh and salt water). A marine biologist works to preserve ocean life and also to educate people about it. Henry Milliken is a fisheries biologist who works with the National Marine Fisheries Service (a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Henry's main responsibilities are trying to reduce by-catch (animals caught unintentionally in fishing gear), specifically to protect sea turtles that get caught in commercial fishing nets. Loggerhead and leatherback turtles are two species of sea turtle that are threatened by this problem and are protected by the federal government. The government SEA HISTORY 123, SUMMER 2008
NOAA Fisheries Biologist Henry Milliken at sea on a commercial fishing boat works with fishermen to reduce by-catch in their nets.
also recognizes that commercial fishing is important too, so it hires people like Henry to help work on a solution. Henry works with fishermen on new designs for fishing gear to keep turtles from getting caught in the first place, escape from fishing gear if they do get trapped, and avoid getting injured in the process. Most of the time he works in an office or in a lab, but he spends several weeks a year out on commercial fishing vessels doing field work.
Marine biologists work for all kinds of employers. Henry Milliken's employer (his boss) is the United States Government, but other types of businesses and institutions hire marine biologists as well, such as private environmental consulting companies, universities and schools, research labs, etc. The National Sea Grant Office has a very helpful web site describing many kinds of careers in the marine sciences. Check it out at: www.marinecareers.net. ,!,
This loggerhead turtle has been caught by accident in a fishing net. Ma rine biologists are helping to find a way to keep this from happening to the turtles, while not seriously limiting the fishing industry's abiliry to catch fish.