How to Become a Marine Biologist
Lessons in dogged pursuit of a dream and the inspirational women who helped me get there
By Dr. Stacy Jupiter | May 9, 2024
[Note: This essay has been expanded from a commentary originally published at PBS Nature earlier this year for Women’s History Month]
When I was twelve years old, I announced to my family that I intended to become a marine biologist. We didn’t live next to the ocean in the suburbs west of Boston, so I don’t think anyone took me that seriously. I had recently finished reading “The Arm of the Starfish” by Madeleine L’Engle, which had marine biologists as central characters and ignited my already curious interest in the natural world.
But how does one become a marine biologist? Much to my consternation, there was no playbook to which I could refer. Meanwhile, there were much clearer roadmaps to “sensible” career pathways in medicine, law or business. For my family, marine biology was the stuff of comedy, recalling the infamous scene from Seinfeld where George Constanza recounts, “The sea was angry that day, my friends — like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.”
That episode, in which George describes how he pulled out a golf ball obstructing the blowhole of a “great fish,” first aired in 1994 as I was completing my first year as a biology major at Harvard University.
While my family kept waiting for me to take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) in expectation of following my father’s footsteps as a doctor, I searched for an entry into any field resembling marine biology, for which Harvard offered few courses. When I realized that I could use my high school Advanced Placement course scores to qualify for Advanced Standing — whereby I only needed three years of Harvard coursework to graduate — I filled my third “gap” year as an undergraduate following my marine biology passions.
While my family kept waiting for me to take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) in expectation of following my father’s footsteps as a doctor, I searched for an entry into any field resembling marine biology.
First, I enrolled for a semester at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina, where I lived on an island by the sea, learned to SCUBA dive, and got a taste for what marine mammal work might be like when volunteering one night to sponge-bathe a stranded dolphin.
From North Carolina, I ventured across the Pacific Ocean to the University of Sydney, Australia, where Professor Maria Byrne agreed to take on an unknown but eager American student to volunteer in her lab. I had read about Maria’s research on seastar embryology and I was excited to meet a real life marine biologist who seemed sprung from the pages of the classic Madeleine L’Engle novel. Maria was a dynamo, running a lab and large research program, teaching a full course load, while also looking after two small children. I thought, “I want to be just like her.”
Because it wasn’t the right season to investigate seastar reproduction and development, Maria asked me if I would like to assist her on a small grant that she had to look at reproduction in freshwater mussels.
“Want to go dive in Lake Burragorang to do some collections?” she asked.
“Well,” I reasoned, “it’s still underwater, so why not.”
Lake Burragorang is a large reservoir in the lower Blue Mountains that provides a major water supply for greater metropolitan Sydney. The underwater vistas of the lake were the opposite of glamorous, but we quickly found the mussels and did some collections to take back to the lab.
Thus, I embarked on a project to study the anatomy of the larvae of the mussels and, in doing so, I learned how to use scanning electron microscopes. Sitting in a dark room staring down the lens of a giant machine was not exactly what I had envisioned for my quest to become a marine biologist floating in coral seas, but I did learn skills that enabled me to combine my artistic sensibilities through photography with my scientific brain in describing how these little critters operate.
The mussel larvae looked like mini hamburgers, each only slightly wider than a human hair. They contain a set of interlocking teeth with hooks that allow them to grab on to the gills of a fish host, where they can safely grow and develop into juveniles before dropping off to settle. Maria guided me to write my first scientific paper on the little beasties, which was published in the journal Invertebrate Reproduction and Development just as I started back at my senior year at Harvard.
Following graduation, I joined the Peace Corps. During my interview, I told my recruiter about my great vision for becoming a marine biologist and working with reef fisheries, which ended up translating to a posting as a Rural Fisheries Extension Agent in Gabon in Central Africa. I was getting closer to my dream in terms of working with fish, but these fish were in inland waters where I provided guidance to rural farmers in the rainforest on tilapia aquaculture. I was stuck upstream and stuck in the mud, biking everyday as far as 40 kilometers between remote villages on a muddy dirt track.
Following graduation, I joined the Peace Corps as a Rural Fisheries Extension Agent in Gabon in Central Africa. I was getting closer to my dream in terms of working with fish, but these fish were in inland waters.
One particular incident during my time in Gabon really stuck with me. One day, my closest friend asked me if I wanted to go with her and the women of the village of Oboui on a fishing expedition deep into the heart of the forest. It sounded different, so of course I said yes. We started before dawn moving across the plantations of the cleared secondary forest. As the sun came up, I looked into the woven basket on my friend Leontine’s back and saw that it was filled with weird, thick, bark-like wood.
“What’s that?” I asked her, to which she responded in French, “It will make the fish jump out of the water.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I kept my mouth shut and followed the women, old and young, snaking their way through the forest trail until we reached dark, virgin forest where finally the footpath merged with a streambed.
“We’re going to pound the wood,” Leontine said, as the women started using their machetes to hack off tree branches and trunks that became their makeshift pestles. Indeed, they started pounding the wood laid out on the ground until its fibers became loose. Only many years later did I learn that the wood contained a kind of fish poison that literally did make the fish, including bizarre looking electric mormyrids, rise up out of the water after we shook the wood in woven nets upstream.
A few weeks later, I was in a French café in Gabon’s capital, Libreville, feeling about as far away mentally as you could get from the rainforest fishing expedition, when I happened to meet Carl Hopkins. Carl was a freshwater fish specialist and professor in neurobiology and behavior from Cornell University. I shared the story of the fishing expedition and drew him a picture of the prehistoric looking mormyrid from memory, to which he exclaimed, “That’s our exact study species!” He seemed interested to offer me a place in his lab once I finished my Peace Corps service, but I was determined to get myself to a coral reef, come hell or high water.
Speaking of high water, during the rainy seasons in Gabon, the rain came in torrents, swelling rainforest creeks and streams that quickly filled with the red clay mud from the road and nearby plantations. It was during this time that I started wondering about where all of that mud went, a question I dove into for my doctoral dissertation through the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as at the University of Queensland while on a Fulbright scholarship.
Over the past 16 years, I’ve made hundreds of dives to investigate coral reef health — learning lessons about the sensitivity of these fragile systems to global climate change and how they respond to local management.
My research aimed to investigate how historical land clearing for agriculture changed the amount of sediments reaching the nearshore Great Barrier Reef. While the ultimate aim of the research was to understand the impacts on the coral reef itself, I spent the majority of my time in the field still stuck in the mud — either upstream in the watershed taking water quality samples or downstream in the mangroves trying to figure out where the mud ended up and how it changed the shape of the Pioneer River estuary.
I was aided in my work by one particularly generous individual, who cared enough about the environment to offer me a place to stay and some lovely meals in exchange for the occasional assistance I could provide pulling out invasive lantana from her property and using my artistic skills to support local conservation efforts. Maureen Cooper, my host in Walkerston, Queensland, became like a second mother to me and showed me how the drive of a single individual can bring wildlife back from former sugarcane fields that she restored to native bushland.
My experience looking at the connections from ridge to reef in Australia ultimately led to a position with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Fiji. So, I got to the reefs in the end. Fiji contains about 35 percent of all of the coral reef area in the southwest Pacific. In my roles running the WCS Fiji country program, and subsequently as Melanesia Regional Director, I have been very lucky to see my fair share of them.
Over the past 16 years, I’ve made hundreds of dives to investigate coral reef health, trying to learn lessons about the sensitivity of these fragile systems to global climate change and how they respond to local management.
As the newly appointed Executive Director of WCS’s Global Marine program, I am ready to take on new challenges in supporting our teams around the world to develop innovative and equitable approaches to ocean conservation in tropical, temperate, and polar regions. And like the women who inspired me, I am also ready to support the next generation of marine biologists, particularly young women whom I can mentor to become future champions of ocean conservation.
Stacy Jupiter is the Executive Director of the Global Marine Program at WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society).
