Hey to anybody who is reading this. My name is Duncan Morton and I recently completed my master's course in marine biology at the University of Plymouth. I'm starting this blog to talk about what that process was like and to chronicle my search for a marine biology job. Although because that sounds kind of boring even to me what I'm mainly planning to write about are things that I see or hear about that interest me. I will try to keep it marine science related as there are a lot of interesting and key issues involving our oceans that are going on presently. However, there will probably be the occasional post about something I find cool.

To start off I thought I would talk about how I got to this point (i.e what lead me to do a master's program, why I choose marine biology, what I did my dissertation on, etc.). My family has always been big on pets. We've had 5 cats, 3 dogs, 5 hamsters, 3 rats, 4 ferrets, 3 rabbits, and a ridiculous number of fish. Recently my grandmother, my mom's mom, moved in with my parents bringing an additional 4 cats and 1 dog so that at present there are 7 cats, 1 dog, 2 ferrets and 2 rats in the house. Coming from this perhaps it is not surprising that I have always loved animals. Growing up my second passion after animals was the water. I learned to swim early on and even helped to teach swim lessons from the time I was 10. I swam competitively for my school from ages 12-18, and worked as a lifeguard from the age of 15. When I was in high school and I began to think about what I wanted to do with my life after school I was stumped. I considered being a football coach, a doctor, trainer, even an astronaut. The only thing I knew for sure was that whatever I chose to do I wanted it to be something I enjoyed. I knew a lot of people who chose careers which payed well even if they hated the job. I decided early on that I was going to do something that made me happy and worry about money after that. With this in mind I thought about what I was passionate about, and decided that since I loved animals and being around the water then marine biology made a lot of sense. It helped that science was one of my favorite subjects and that I was good at it.

Knowing what I wanted to be now I graduated high school, earned my associate's degree from Monroe Community College and transferred to Coastal Carolina University for my last two years to earn my bachelor's degree in marine science.
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So I wrote a lot more than I was expecting to and I'm not even to Plymouth yet so I've decided to make this Part 1 of Duncan's Adventures. I will continue the story sometime later this week when I have time, and hopefully post something interesting with pictures of sea turtles or something. :)