Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Insider Tips for Building a Career in Marine Science
Transcript
- 0:00I wanted to take time out of our regularly scheduled program to talk
- 0:03about careers in marine science and conservation.
- 0:07There have been a lot of you who have reached out to me over the years to
- 0:10talk about careers. How do I get into this career? Do you know of
- 0:14any jobs that are available in this? And where should I
- 0:17begin? And I don't know anybody in the field and so forth.
- 0:20And I wanted to take the time today on this episode of
- 0:23the How to Protect the Ocean podcast to be able to reach out
- 0:27and say, hey, you know what? Here's what I would do if
- 0:31I were to do it all over again. And the reason I'm doing this is
- 0:34because I'm kind of in a period of my life where
- 0:37my daughter wants to become a wildlife biologist. And
- 0:41she's going to take zoology in university. She's about a year out. She's a
- 0:44senior in high school. And we're talking
- 0:47about careers. We're talking about what she needs to be able to do.
- 0:51And I have some ideas for her based on how things have changed since I
- 0:54started and where I think some things that I've learned and
- 0:57advice that I would like to give her. And I kind of want to shoot it
- 1:01out to you as well, for those of you who are looking for jobs and
- 1:04trying to build a career in marine science and conservation. So
- 1:08with that said, let's start the show and talk about marine
- 1:12careers. Hey
- 1:17everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
- 1:21I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
- 1:24the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for
- 1:28a better ocean by taking action. Now, I
- 1:31am a marine science communicator. That's what
- 1:35I do. I'm a conservation and science communicator. I am a psycommer. That's
- 1:38what I love to do. I love to talk about the ocean. I love to engage with
- 1:42conversations about the ocean, about climate change, about the issues facing the
- 1:45ocean, like climate change, and being able to
- 1:49give advice on career paths and, you know, where
- 1:52to find careers. I manage a Facebook group with
- 1:56over 25,000 people where we discuss you
- 1:59know in post conservation jobs and there's talk about conservation
- 2:03and where people should go to get a job in
- 2:06conservation and how they should build up their experience and
- 2:10how they should begin their career really a lot of people are struggling
- 2:14to find jobs after they finish
- 2:18their schooling And it could be for a variety of different reasons. One,
- 2:21it's just difficult to get a job these days. The job market is not
- 2:25easy in any sort of industry, whether you're looking at
- 2:28science or you're looking at business, it doesn't matter. It's
- 2:31a very difficult industry to break into in general, and
- 2:35then you're adding on to a difficult time to find a job. It
- 2:38makes it really hard to find jobs. But you
- 2:42want to be able to like the advice I'd like to give you today is
- 2:45just sort of managing your marine conservation career for
- 2:49the long term and understanding that it's not a
- 2:52straight path from school when you decide to become a
- 2:55marine biologist or marine conservationist all the way to the end of
- 2:59your career. there's going to be times where you're going to meander, there's
- 3:02going to be times where you're going to fall and you're going to take risks and it's going to
- 3:05work out and sometimes it's not going to work out. There's going to be times where you
- 3:08may find a job and you may work in that forever. I highly doubt it, there's
- 3:11going to be a lot of changes but the industry has changed.
- 3:16for for better or for worse it's changed just
- 3:19like the world changes like the ocean has changed it's
- 3:23evolved and we've seen a lot of different changes from secured
- 3:27government positions to going out on your own and risking um
- 3:31a lot you know risking your lifestyle risking your money for
- 3:35your family and your mortgage and all that kind of stuff so what i
- 3:38want to do is kind of give you a breakdown of what you
- 3:41know, marine science and conservation career looks like, what, how
- 3:45can it impact your lifestyle, managing risk within
- 3:48that and sort of understanding, you
- 3:52know, what those risks are and how that could affect your life. And also, I
- 3:55want to say this before I really begin is, I'm
- 3:58still going through it, right? I'm 45, I'm going to be
- 4:01turning 46 in a couple of weeks. And it's
- 4:05going to be, you know, I'm still going through it. I haven't figured
- 4:09out anything. there are a lot of people who give job advice and
- 4:12we're all still just kind of figuring things out and we're sharing our
- 4:15experiences and we're sharing our advice based
- 4:19on what's happened to us and our lifestyle and where we sit you
- 4:23know sort of in lifestyle and you know whether we're middle class lower
- 4:26middle class upper middle class above that whatever that
- 4:29might be I would consider myself middle class at
- 4:32this point, maybe a little on the upper middle class. I have a very different
- 4:37experience from many of you who may not sit
- 4:40in that category or may not be a white male
- 4:44in this industry. So I'm coming at you from my experience
- 4:47and I'm giving you advice based on my experience and based on the
- 4:51experiences that I've talked to people with and seen them go through.
- 4:55And also I have another podcast that I co-host called Beyond Jaws where
- 4:58we talk to shark scientists from all over the world
- 5:02and talk about how they work and where they go and what
- 5:05they do in their niche, in their industry, in their field, and
- 5:09be able to be successful. And their success is defined differently.
- 5:13Everybody's success is defined differently. It really comes down to
- 5:17what do you want to accomplish within your career? How
- 5:20do you want to accomplish it? And how do you want to live through it as
- 5:24a father? Who's giving advice to
- 5:27his daughter who's going into a great 12 in
- 5:31high school? So seniors for a lot of you Americans, you know, she's
- 5:34gonna be a senior and you know looking at where
- 5:37she wants to go, go to university, what type of job she wants to do. As
- 5:41a dad, I always look at, well, what kind of lifestyle do you want? Do
- 5:44you want family? Do you want to be close to family? Do you want to live
- 5:48around the world? How are you going to do that? Safety, and
- 5:54what kind of jobs you can get. Are they sustainable? Are they something that
- 5:57you can actually build a lifestyle around? The
- 6:01world is a lot different place than when I started. I bought my house
- 6:04for probably a fraction of what the house is worth today in the
- 6:08place that I in the city that I live today and a lot of cities around the
- 6:11world it's more expensive to live houses and and housing or
- 6:15any kind of residence that you want to buy or rent is extremely expensive
- 6:19now and so a lot of the salaried positions or
- 6:22paid positions within this industry is
- 6:26not that high, hasn't risen to the level where it's considered
- 6:30to be within par of renting or buying
- 6:34a residence. So as a dad and seeing my daughter graduating
- 6:40into that lifestyle, I worry and I want
- 6:43to make sure that she understands what the risks are and
- 6:47where she can go. And so that will be,
- 6:50it's gonna be an interesting conversation and we're gonna try and figure out together, but
- 6:53I wanted to give you this advice and sort of give you this
- 6:57breakdown of the industry and what you can do with it
- 7:01and how it might affect your lifestyle, where you're coming
- 7:04from. And I would also love to hear your, before I go into
- 7:08it all, I would love to hear you know, how
- 7:12it's affected you, if you're mid-career, if you're early career, if
- 7:15you're late career, I'd love to hear your stories. You
- 7:19can either DM me or maybe we can do an interview on the podcast and
- 7:22get that experience going. and sharing it with other people.
- 7:26But let's just get into sort of the breakdown. Now, when
- 7:29I first started back in, you know, my university
- 7:33career started in 1997. So it's been a long time. And
- 7:37I've had, you know, job advice throughout my entire career. But
- 7:40back then, the big push in Canada was to say,
- 7:44hey, we're gonna see a lot of
- 7:47baby boomers start, I'm Generation X, we're gonna see a lot of baby
- 7:50boomers start to retire soon. So you're graduating
- 7:54at a great time, you're taking school at a great time, because a lot of places in
- 7:57the government, which was like at that time, if you got hired by the
- 8:00government right out of school, you probably had that job or something similar
- 8:04within the government until you retire at the age of 55, which
- 8:07a lot of government employees were retiring at. And we're like,
- 8:10OK, that's great. This is wonderful. Then 2000 hit. And
- 8:15the stock market crash hit. And the dot-com bubble crash happened.
- 8:19And you're like, oh, OK, not as many people are retiring because
- 8:22their retirement went to crap. And so when
- 8:26I graduated in 2001, there weren't many jobs available.
- 8:31and you know the internet wasn't as abundant as we had now where jobs
- 8:34are being posted on the internet all the time and you can you know you had like in
- 8:38like indeed.com and all these different job sites where you can apply
- 8:41quickly and LinkedIn and all this kind of stuff it wasn't like that there
- 8:45were jobs being posted but you had to apply like through email or
- 8:48you had to apply you know via like letter sometimes
- 8:52and so that was difficult so the jobs were more regional back
- 8:56then it was very difficult to get a job if I lived in Canada to get a job in
- 8:59the U.S. although I did eventually find something in the U.S. but I
- 9:03feel as though I lucked out when I first got that first job because
- 9:07the people who I replaced basically quit a week before I
- 9:11called to get hired and had the interview on the spot and
- 9:14was down within a week of that working for about
- 9:17eight months in the ocean. So you know, it's
- 9:21a very different time right now. And what we've seen, like, you know, I talked about
- 9:24the government jobs, and this was happening at the government level
- 9:28in the US and in Canada, we started to see a switch in
- 9:31the way the government handled hiring people.
- 9:35And what was happening is before, here in Canada, you would get a lot
- 9:38of, you'd get hired as a permanent staff, full-time staffer, and
- 9:41then you would work for, you know, 30, 40 years, and
- 9:44then you would retire. And the same thing would happen in the US federally. and
- 9:48as well as provincially state and state level. And
- 9:52that was the cream of the crop. If you got to work with government,
- 9:55you got great benefits. You got a great, you
- 9:58were unionized most likely. So you got, you know, vacation
- 10:02and sick leave and dental and health and depending on where
- 10:05you lived. in which country lived and then it was that was
- 10:08wonderful like that was the time to say hey government job
- 10:12will pay you well you get a pension you know you're you're set up
- 10:15for retirement and everything like that you can retire early at full pension
- 10:18and still be able to consult and do other things and it's it's a
- 10:22wonderful feeling and you and you get to contribute to your you
- 10:26know, a government or, you know, some data and build a program
- 10:29or continue on a long lasting program and so forth. And that
- 10:33was wonderful. That's changed. That's changed quite a
- 10:36bit. In the US, it's changed into the, sorry, I'll start
- 10:39in Canada. In Canada, it's changed where now they hire you full time,
- 10:43but you're not permanent. You're temporary, right? And
- 10:46so when you get hired as temporary, you basically have maybe a
- 10:49year, a two or three year renewal. So
- 10:53if it's a year, it's an annual renewal. You don't know if you have a job at the end of that
- 10:56fiscal year. So in federal government, you go from April 1st
- 11:00to March 31st of the next year. And so at the end of that March
- 11:0331st, you may not know a week before if you
- 11:07have a job or not. You may be signing your paperwork if it's an annual renewal.
- 11:11And people were doing that for 25 years, 30 years, 40 years. They were retiring
- 11:15off of it. They were hired as a temporary full-time staff.
- 11:18Now, they got all the benefits, and they got the pension, and they got everything, but
- 11:21they never knew if they were going to get hired for the long term. A
- 11:24lot of them that had been there for a long time kind of went through the motions, and it was
- 11:28less risky, but for me as someone who was young, I was like, oh,
- 11:31well, this isn't, I got a family to feed. Like, I need something more permanent. I
- 11:34would like something more permanent. But what I quickly realized is
- 11:38that, and I worked in the private consulting industry before, that
- 11:41wasn't a permanent thing and the pension wasn't a pension it
- 11:44was you put into a 401k or an rsp if you live in canada and
- 11:49uh you would get a bonus you get paid less to keep your hourly rate down but
- 11:52you get a bigger bonus and so that would go towards retirement and you'd have to
- 11:56almost save for your own retirement now so you're not in a government job
- 11:59where you have a pension But you have a private job where
- 12:03they're giving you extra money because they're going for profit and they want
- 12:06to keep you around if you're good. And if you're not good, if you don't like you, boom,
- 12:10if you don't get along with others, you're gone or you're laid off because they
- 12:13don't have enough jobs or you're not billable full time or at the 85% that you want. So
- 12:18doing private consulting or even consulting on your own is a very difficult
- 12:21process because it all depends on how well you can network, how
- 12:24well you can build relationships with clients and
- 12:28have them come back to you for every single project and build that
- 12:32rapport with clients and build that sort of roster of clients so you
- 12:35continue to have that as you go along. I've tried working
- 12:39for a firm and tried working within there and I've tried working on my
- 12:42own. They're both challenging in their own right. If
- 12:46you go to a private consulting firm and you can bring
- 12:49in jobs, like you're good at doing proposals and
- 12:53looking for grants and money and things like that. then
- 12:57you can succeed quite well. If you're somebody who's depending on
- 13:00other people to get jobs, it really depends on how well you can network within.
- 13:04And sometimes networking with different scientists and a company managed by
- 13:07scientists is not always easy because what you
- 13:11think you do right is not something that they may like or
- 13:14not. So it's not an easy gig. Plus
- 13:18you are working for industry. you're working
- 13:21for or you know companies that are could or
- 13:25have a potential doing harm to the environment you're working to make sure that they they
- 13:28work within the regulations and things but There's
- 13:32definitely a Sense and a lot of people get burnt out by
- 13:35the fact like hey I don't really want to be helping these companies pollute more oil
- 13:39and gas mining companies and so forth It's
- 13:42it could be a difficult thing to really think about now You can
- 13:45work for government as a consultant you can work for all these kind of
- 13:48things that consultant But it's hard to get those jobs and one of the things where I
- 13:52saw that the signs when I was consulting on my own is I got a
- 13:55government contract, it was in marine conservation, it was with mapping, and I
- 13:58was doing really well, and I was really liking it, and then all of a sudden I
- 14:01started to, you know, I tried to apply for another, another sort
- 14:06of consulting opportunity. They're saying, oh, we can't, the government can't show
- 14:09favoritism towards you again by hiring you twice, even though
- 14:12I was well qualified for the job. it was just the way it
- 14:16went so I was like well you know if I can't get the job based on merit or
- 14:19based on you know they don't want to show favoritism that doesn't leave a
- 14:22lot of security for me. At the time I had
- 14:26two young kids, I had a mortgage to pay, I had a family to help
- 14:29support with my wife who works thank God and I
- 14:32decided to get out of that business. because
- 14:36it was difficult, because I couldn't really get the contracts that
- 14:40I needed to put in my support
- 14:43of the family at that time. And so that's
- 14:48sort of the nature of private consulting. It's still kind of the same
- 14:52whether you're on your own or you're with a firm. There
- 14:56could be a lot of money in it for you down the road, but it really depends on
- 14:59what your goal is. You can do a lot of fieldwork or you
- 15:03can do a lot of paperwork. Again, it really depends within private
- 15:06consulting what that goal is. With government, the jobs tend
- 15:10not to change, but you're at the will of the
- 15:13political party that's in power. So sometimes you'll get a political party
- 15:17that wants to inject money into science and into conservation, and
- 15:21then others you'll get a political party who wants to cut government spending. And
- 15:24so that means they're going to cut support for the public sector, whether it
- 15:27be in science, whether it be in statistics, whether
- 15:31it be just in people power in general.
- 15:35and they cut things. So I was part in Canada, I was part
- 15:38of a series of layoffs or people
- 15:42being affected at their regular positions because the Conservative
- 15:45government of Canada at the time, led by Prime Minister Harper, wanted
- 15:49to cut stock assessments, wanted to cut the amount of time it took to
- 15:52do environmental assessments. He eventually wanted to cut the Species
- 15:56at Risk Act down so that it wouldn't be
- 16:00as difficult or as long to do an assessment for
- 16:04oil and gas projects. He got some of that done, but
- 16:07he didn't get all of that done before he got voted out. That
- 16:10wasn't the reason why he got voted out, it was for other reasons. You
- 16:14just never know. You're at the behest of the political group in power for the
- 16:17government. You get to work with some pretty cool people across
- 16:21this industry, but that's sort of the nature of government. So governments change, private
- 16:25consulting kind of stays the same, but it could be difficult. There could be
- 16:28a lot of challenges of working within that. Now, nonprofit organizations, you
- 16:32can do some great work, some really rewarding work, and you can
- 16:35do some great things. You can travel around the world depending on the organization. However,
- 16:39you're probably not going to get paid a lot. These organizations are
- 16:43led and supported by grant and foundation money which
- 16:47has changed in their structure in terms of how they give money out. A
- 16:51lot of organizations can only give a certain percentage to overhead which is
- 16:54basically to their staff which is a main portion of
- 16:57their overhead. And so when they get a grant from an organization or
- 17:02a grant from a foundation, then these organizations
- 17:05can only dedicate a certain amount of money towards salaries and
- 17:09benefits and supporting their staff. So
- 17:13that means the pay is a lot lower because not a lot of those grants
- 17:16and individual donations may not be enough to support the rest.
- 17:20that can be a difficult part. So organizations, a
- 17:25lot of big organizations tend to hire early career
- 17:28researchers because they don't have to pay them as much, but they don't get the same experience, so
- 17:32they don't get the same data in their documents. That could be a challenge for
- 17:35that organization, plus a challenge for early career or
- 17:38mid or late career scientists and
- 17:42staff because they may not get paid a lot. you
- 17:46know if they want to stay in a lot of these organizations started forty five thousand
- 17:49dollars u s if that's not a lot of money to support yourself these
- 17:52days you know to buy a house or rent an apartment or
- 17:56do whatever it can be very difficult and i know people who work in the non-profit
- 18:00or organization and they don't have they may not have a lifestyle that you'd
- 18:03expect you know they may not have a house they may not be able to be ready
- 18:07which is fine there's nothing wrong with that not saying there's anything wrong with that
- 18:11But if people grow up in this industry, I think a lot of times we have this
- 18:14sort of grandioso expectations of
- 18:18what we'd expect to do as a marine conservationist or a marine
- 18:22scientist. And we don't always get that. We don't always
- 18:25see the rewards. And the pay is definitely
- 18:29not up there. We get the rewards of the job. And
- 18:32that's great. But you have to support yourself. You have to have that lifestyle. Some
- 18:36people will get burnt out. Some people are like, I need to earn money. I need to go out and
- 18:39do stuff. and that's what they'll do eventually, and they'll maybe
- 18:43work in a different industry, and maybe stay on a board of directors, or
- 18:46they'll do something else. Or they'll go on their own and try and consult on
- 18:49their own, which again is challenging, but it's possible. People
- 18:53do this stuff all the time, but not as many people do
- 18:56it. More and more people are doing it because they can control those things. So
- 19:01there are a lot of things that will help you, or
- 19:05there are a lot of things that are good about every, you know, advantages and disadvantages to
- 19:08every sector, but it can be very difficult to
- 19:12work in that. Non-profit organizations or large organizations or
- 19:15small organizations or medium-sized organizations, what I would say
- 19:18when you look at these organizations, look at how long people stay,
- 19:22ask them how long people stay. If they stay for a long time,
- 19:25that means this organization is good to their people. and
- 19:30you know you know 10 years 15 years even over five
- 19:33years is great to see if there's a lot of turnover that means
- 19:37they're you know their their grants may not come in all the time they
- 19:40may have to lay people off at times you don't want
- 19:43to be working for free you want to be working you know for pay
- 19:47and and to work for an organization to volunteer to
- 19:50get experience is one thing but to do that as a long term thing unless you're
- 19:54a rich billionaire is really difficult to do and
- 19:57be able to eat and be able to survive on your own. I
- 20:03feel like being in marine science and conservation is one
- 20:06of those industries where people, especially early career, including myself, when
- 20:09I was early career and I just got out of school, I'm like, I'll work
- 20:13for free. I'll go out on a boat for free. I'll do that because that looks fun. I
- 20:16can't wait to do that. That's what I've been dreaming about since I
- 20:19was 14 years old. That's what I've been looking at libraries and
- 20:23just thinking about and visualizing what I can do. And
- 20:27I'll do it for free. I'll do that work for free. I even volunteered to do statistical analysis
- 20:31for free when I was younger. Why? Why would I do that? Because
- 20:34I loved the job so much. I loved doing it so much and I was so enthusiastic. But
- 20:38the problem is there are organizations out there, there are people out there that will kind
- 20:42of predate on people like that and take advantage of
- 20:45your willingness and passion to do the type of work. So
- 20:50if you're going into a consulting role or you want to do work and get experience,
- 20:53that's one thing. But also understand that you are
- 20:57a professional at this point. If you have a BSC, an undergrad degree
- 21:01or a graduate degree, then you are a professional. You deserve to be paid.
- 21:05And the more times we start to say, and as a staff, we
- 21:08start to fight back and be like, we need to get paid for this job, this is for a professional, the
- 21:12better it is. When you join my group, Marine Science and Conservation Careers, in
- 21:16the Facebook group, I don't allow, I control all the
- 21:19posts. I do not allow people to post things just
- 21:22based on a volunteership unless I see some sort of mentorship or
- 21:26internship happen through there. In the U.S. there are specific laws
- 21:29if you advertise for an internship, it either has
- 21:33to be paid or there has to be some sort of mentorship. There's rules and
- 21:36regulations around what you post based on like the Ministry of Labor
- 21:39or the Department of Labor. I'm not too sure the laws there. But that's what
- 21:43it should be. So I'm very particular about the types of jobs
- 21:46that get posted. Same in my LinkedIn group, my marine biologists group. that
- 21:53jobs group is important for me because i'm like i only want to do was paid
- 21:57positions and if people are putting up the salaries i'll all you know
- 22:00prioritize based on posting you know post that are job
- 22:04posts that have the salaries within it because people need to know what
- 22:07they're applying for not to take my time take two weeks to apply
- 22:10to a job where it's gonna be like
- 22:14forty five thousand dollars a year i'm sorry forty five years old You
- 22:17know, I have a mortgage. I have kids who are going to university. I have,
- 22:21you know, this is not a time where I can work for $45,000 a
- 22:24year. You know, I need to be able to, you
- 22:28know, make ends meet. I need to be able to help support my
- 22:31family. And that's just the way the reality is
- 22:35of it. So there's certain jobs that I cannot apply for because I need
- 22:38to know. But I need to know the salaries before I apply to these jobs. Because some of these jobs require
- 22:41a lot of experience, but they only pay under $50,000 a year. And
- 22:45at this point, for me, I mean, for an early career researcher, it might
- 22:48be good. Or early career scientists and conservationists, that might be good. but
- 22:52for me at this point in my life it's just not that good. So you're adjusting
- 22:56as you grow into the industry, as you start to evolve into the
- 22:59industry and as you get older and your priorities change and you have a family or
- 23:02if you decide to have a family, that's how it's going to change and that's how
- 23:06you need to look at it and look at salary expectations. And
- 23:09the salary expectations not only work for when companies
- 23:13ask you, but when you ask the companies, like, what do you expect to pay for us? What's the
- 23:16range? More and more companies and organizations are putting up their ranges, which
- 23:20is great to see, but we still need to push for that. As people
- 23:24who are trying to apply to jobs, it should be there. You shouldn't
- 23:28demand the best of the best at $45,000 a year. You
- 23:31should expect, like, this should be the people we expect, early
- 23:35career scientists, one or two years, out of college or out of
- 23:38university and be able to, you know, have that type of experience and build that
- 23:41type of experience. There's nothing wrong with that. But when you're 45 years
- 23:44old and you've got, you know, 20 some odd years experience in
- 23:49sort of the field, then that salary needs to be upped
- 23:53and that salary needs to be appropriate for that person with that experience. you
- 23:58know I'm not bringing this to me this is again it's my experience and
- 24:01I wanted to kind of give you that thought process and to give you hey this
- 24:05is your career you do what you want but I want you
- 24:09to really understand sort of the the
- 24:12differences in what is expected not only in
- 24:16a job but in a lifestyle as I mentioned before marine
- 24:19biology and marine conservationists we are very passionate
- 24:23about the work we'll do. We'll do work for free. We'll do work on top of
- 24:26work, like as volunteers, even though we have a job in marine
- 24:29science and conservation, because we love what we do. We'll have pet projects. We'll
- 24:33always have those projects that we do, whether we're Dr. Andrew Thaler
- 24:36and we get some of that funded through Patreon, or we're just somebody who's
- 24:40just really enthusiastic and has data available and wants to publish
- 24:43a paper on it. We could do that, but you also
- 24:46have to understand that you have a life beyond work. And
- 24:51there's a huge push with corporate jobs and things like that to understand that
- 24:54you work 9 to 5 or you work certain type of hours. Your off
- 24:58hours should be your hobbies. It shouldn't necessarily be all
- 25:01enthralled in work. I've seen a lot of people get burnt out
- 25:05by the work they do in marine science and conservation. They want to do so much.
- 25:08They want to build their experience, especially when you're young and you want to hustle. That's
- 25:12fine. You have the energy. You may not have the commitments, the family commitments, or
- 25:15the financial commitments. And you can take more risks. you
- 25:19know and travel a little bit or or do a volunteership if
- 25:22you can afford it and it's worthwhile or you can move to
- 25:25a different city for a little bit and build a you know life in that
- 25:29city if that's going to be a long-term life or just move for a little bit come back
- 25:32home and go somewhere else that's great that's great that you're able
- 25:36to do that when you're younger but as you grow older you your
- 25:39your commitments financial and family commitments may change as you go
- 25:42through as you go through life and so you need to realize that
- 25:46you need to realize that there are things And there are things to do
- 25:49and hobbies to have outside of work after
- 25:53that time and to have that break. Everybody needs
- 25:56a break. You can't think about it all the time. No matter who you are
- 26:00and what you think, you're going to need a break at some time. You're going to need to shut your
- 26:03mind off at some time. And having that downtime
- 26:07with family or with friends or doing a hobby is
- 26:11really great. And it's really helpful for you to be able to do that.
- 26:15and not always worry about money. That's a big thing. I can't stress
- 26:19that enough when I give advice about marine science and conservation
- 26:22careers. That's a huge, huge thing is be able to support yourself
- 26:26in the lifestyle that you want to lead. You might be a
- 26:29minimalist. You might be okay with, you know, renting
- 26:32apartments. That's great. But just understand that
- 26:36there are different options within the marine science and conservation world,
- 26:39and there are different pay options within that world. And be prepared to
- 26:43take lower than normal salary than a lot of your friends, but also be prepared
- 26:47to have some pretty cool adventures as well. One
- 26:51sector I didn't mention is going the professor route or going the
- 26:54researcher route within a university. And that will require you to
- 26:57do more graduate work, so a master's and
- 27:00or a PhD, or just a PhD without a master's. That
- 27:05is something that you can do. Be advised. There's going
- 27:08to be a lot more that you have to pay in terms of graduate school.
- 27:12Not only the tuition, but also your lifestyle surrounding that.
- 27:15You still have to live somewhere. You still have to be able to do things. You
- 27:19know, going to conferences and things like that. If you want to build an academic career, you
- 27:22can do that. And you can become a professor. Just realize that
- 27:26there aren't as many universities there are marine science and conservationists. And
- 27:29when you go through university, they try and put you through to you
- 27:33know the professor track or the academic track because that's what they know but
- 27:36it doesn't necessarily mean you have to follow that academic career if
- 27:40you want to become a professor you want to try that out that's great go the professor
- 27:43route you know do the phd do the postdoc do
- 27:46another postdoc if you have to stay within that research bounce
- 27:50out into government and organizations and bounce back in
- 27:53You know, see how you can build up your teaching experience through your graduate work,
- 27:58build your networking opportunities through going to conferences and
- 28:01things like that. It doesn't matter what sector you work on, that's going to be important. But
- 28:05if you want to be that professor, that's great. You can earn a decent salary. Just remember
- 28:08that tenure track professorship has changed. And
- 28:13people who are on tenure track don't always get to
- 28:17be a tenured professor. So there's not always a guaranteed job if
- 28:20you become an assistant professor or an associate professor. That's
- 28:23not always guaranteed to be full tenure anymore. You
- 28:28don't see that a lot if you see that at all. There's going to
- 28:31be a pressure to do more teaching. And there's going to be a, you
- 28:34know, it's sort of like you become more of a teacher role. In
- 28:37the U.S., a lot of your salary is coming from the grants that you take or
- 28:41that you get. In Canada, it's a little bit different. I
- 28:44don't know about other countries. So if you're a professor in other countries, I'd love to hear the differences
- 28:47in terms of salary. If you're given like a good base salary
- 28:51and if you are allowed to get money like in the U.S. from grants that
- 28:55you bring in. Universities want to see money coming
- 28:59in. They want to see benefits in terms of products and things
- 29:02like that. Conservation related material and science related material doesn't
- 29:06always translate into what a dean of that school wants,
- 29:09whether biological sciences or science or marine science or things like that. A
- 29:13lot of the times they want to be able to, this university wants to be able to generate money
- 29:16and revenue more revenue from the products that are made by those professors and
- 29:20maybe being able to sold. So biotechnology is big. And
- 29:23you'll see a lot of deans really move their science
- 29:26department more towards health sciences than marine sciences because you
- 29:31can publish 80 papers on conservation, but
- 29:34it doesn't necessarily mean that the university likes that because you're not necessarily
- 29:37bringing in a ton of money to that. And
- 29:41part of that is students, graduate students and things like that. But there's this revenue
- 29:44from products or services that could be generated. So. That's
- 29:48sort of the breakdown of sort of where we're at in today's world from
- 29:52what I know. I would love to know if you have any sort of
- 29:55different experience or perspective. If you wanna come on the podcast and talk about
- 29:58it and share that perspective, that would be great. I would love to have you on.
- 30:01If you wanna just share it in a comment on YouTube or
- 30:05a comment on Spotify or DM me and then you want me to share it, I can share
- 30:08it or we can have conversations around that. That's gonna be on Instagram, just
- 30:12DM me at howtoprotecttheocean. Also remember that
- 30:15I have an app coming out It's probably going to be pushed to September. I'm
- 30:19working with the company, this is the first time they do this app. It's basically a community app.
- 30:24What I wanted to do was be able to post everything that I post and all the information that
- 30:27I post in this app so that you don't have to worry about algorithms and not
- 30:30receiving certain information but you get all ocean all
- 30:34the time whenever you go into that app. We'll do an ask me
- 30:37anything type of of sort
- 30:41of services. There'll be some upgraded and premium services and
- 30:44products in there. But it's basically going to be an all you can, you
- 30:48know, for this for this podcast, as well as for Speak Up
- 30:51for Blue. So it's going to be great. I'm looking forward to it. But be aware
- 30:55that's coming out as well. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of
- 30:58the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo. And I want you to have a great day.