David Aldridge
Southampton, UK
Male, 25
After doing an undergraduate degree in marine biology, I'm now doing a marine biology PhD in the UK at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. I love what I do, but, contrary to popular belief, very few marine biologists actually swim with dolphins or spend their days scuba diving. In my spare time I edit a blog on marine science. Below is a link to a blog post I wrote on why I dread telling people I'm a marine biologist. I recommend that you check it out!
Most of my time is spent in a lab on land. Few marine biologists that I know actually collect the data they need by scuba diving... although, yes there are people who do get to dive quite a lot, this is the exception NOT the rule. Most data is collected at sea on research cruises. These can last anywhere between a few days to 2 months. Most marine biologists will spend no more than a few months at sea each year. The rest of the time is spent analyzing samples in the lab or analyzing data/reading on the computer.
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I think the three biggest threats that I can think of are: overfishing, rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidification. But the biggest threat is really all of these things acting together. On there own, there is a chance that oceanic ecosytems could adjust, but when they all occur at the same time it puts so much pressure on life in the oceans. I guess it would be comparable to someone going into hospital with cancer: on its own it’s bad enough, but if they have heart disease and kidney failure as well it just makes makes recovery much less likely. You mention oil spills. They are bad, but compared to these other problems the effects occur over a much smaller area with things gradually getting better after the spill is cleaned up. They’re certainly a problem, but maybe because they lend themselves to very dramatic images on TV etc. they get more attention than some larger, more pervasive environmental problems.
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During one research cruise I went on you could see great bright flashes of light coming from the wake of the ship during the night. This is caused by a type of phytoplankton that emits light when it is disturbed (probably as a defence strategy). A few of us would often spend hours watching these displays... it was truly mesmerising! You can see this bioluminescence in the video below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&;v=uUbIWqiynBY
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Seinfeld isn’t as big in the UK as in the US, so not that often actually. I guess one funny thing about that episode is that George does actually look like quite a lot of the marine biologists that I know... we don’t all look like jacques cousteau, unfortunately.
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I’d always had an interest in biology and, like many people I guess, was being gently pushed down the medical doctor route. When I was 17, I went to a university open day and instead of going to the talk on medicine (which I had planned on attending), I ended up sitting in on a talk about various biological sciences. Someone stood up and spoke about marine biology and I was absolutely captivated; I instantly knew that’s what I wanted to study.
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Ultimately, shows like that can only be good I think. I guess it is better to get people interested in the general area, and then they are more likely to end up learning about the ‘less cute’ stuff later. As an example, I know lots of people who started studying marine biology because they had been inspired by shows like ‘Blue Planet’. They started with aspirations of working with sharks and dolphins etc. (and some of them did/do), but many others slowly gravitated to less glamorous creatures, found them to be fascinating, and still work on them to this day.
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I do eat seafood, but I do try to eat things that are ecologically sustainable. Humans have to eat something, right, and whatever we eat has some kind of ecological footprint, so I guess it is really about making choices that minimise that footprint (and whilst being a vegetarian would be the best way to do this, I'm afraid I like meat far too much). I try not to eat things that are high up the marine food chain (generally things high up the food chain are worse for the environment): things like tuna and salmon are very bad. The by-catch of fish from even 'dolphin friendly' tuna is horrendous and even farmed salmon need to be fed other fish (usually obtained by environmentally degrading fishing practices). Good things to eat are things low down the food chain: mackerel, mussels and oysters are all very good. My major weakness is battered cod (or haddock) and chips... I love the stuff, but it's not the best fish to eat from an environmental point of view.
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