so I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about one of the coolest perks to doing the job I do
which is being a marine biologist who does field work is working in the field doing the field work
and I figured this is a pretty opportune time to bring this up because I am presently on a deserted
beach on a remote island in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand where I'm leading research to try to
understand the behavior and the consequences of that behavior of coral reef fish and and there's
a lot of conservation implications for this which you can learn more about in my other videos but I
thought this was a cool time to bring up this idea of traveling because I know many people
who are interested in this line of work either because they're interested in becoming a marine
biologist outright out of school and that's the career that they've always wanted or a lot of
folks that contact me are interested in changing careers to get into this line of work which both
of which are perfectly reasonable things to want but I would thought at least give my
take on the travel perk so traveling for this job is amazing and I have been able to travel
the world doing my work I did my dissertation research in French Polynesia I regularly teach
a field course in Mexico I now work in the Gulf of Thailand I have plans to do work elsewhere
there are constantly opportunities to apply for more grant money to do work in new places and to
discover new systems and to answer new questions and to reveal new knowledge that we've never had
as a species so there's just so much excitement associated with the stuff you can do and where you
can do it and right now I'm actually the craziest travel run I've been on I think thus far I spent
three weeks in Mexico teaching on the Caribbean coast you can actually watch a pretty cool video
from some of my students perspectives from that course right after that course had a very brief
stint going to my future brother-in-law's wedding in Austin and then skedaddled out of town with
Heather my research partner and now fiancee to the Gulf of Thailand for the summer where we currently
are from here I am going to Arusha Tanzania to speak at TEDGlobal which is a huge honor and a
privilege and extremely exciting opportunity and then finally after traveling across many
continents and for many many months away from home I'll go back to California where we currently live
and live a normal life for a little while reading writing and trying to publish a lot of the stuff
that I've discovered while I was away so that just gives you a snippet of what my life is like in the
travel world and before this like I said I did my dissertation research abroad and I basically work
exclusively abroad these days so the opportunities to travel are often immense and you can travel
for conferences which I highly encourage young scientists to do you meet all kinds of incredible
people when you do this so the travel is amazing I love it it's one of my favorite parts about this I
was always interested in travel before I got into marine biology but the fact that this is actually
part of my job description is incredible and my willingness to travel has also opened up doors
for me because I now work in the Gulf of Thailand which is a vastly understudied ecosystem where
there's incredible insight to be gained because there's almost no baseline information about it
and so my willingness to come out here with no infrastructure and kind of rough it with of course
Heather's essential help and the help of future research assistants that come out here with me my
willingness to do that opens up new doors and it allows me to make discoveries that others wouldn't
be able to make in systems that are more studied so that's pretty cool too I will just say there's
an important caveat to mention the travel is incredible but it's a perk it's not the main part
of the job right that's sort of that comes with some of the ideas I have and some of the things
I want to accomplish but if you're trying to get in this for world travel if that's your main mo
I suggest looking elsewhere because of course that's a small part of it and as glamorous as it may
look you know I'm on this again this incredible remote island and a remote beach on that Island
and there's nobody here and I can have these conversations with you guys through Heather's
phone which is nicer than my phone that's why I'm using her phone that's all really cool but that is
that's it's like I said it's a it's an additional component that's sort of it's incidental it's
part of the job and it's not glamorous it looks glamorous but it's not glamorous I mean we work
all the time we take almost no time off and that's okay because that's what we choose we
love what we're doing but of course we probably should take more time off than we do but just
to give you an idea the travel may may be less glamorous than it appears to be so enjoy it as
a fringe benefit but don't make it your main reason to want to get into this line of work