First off I just want to apologize for the lack of posting over the last couple weeks. Things got a little hectic around the holidays, but things are back to semi-normal now.
Second I have decided to wrap up the story about my experience becoming a marine biologist. Mainly because I don't feel it is as interesting as I thought it would be when I started, and also because there are other, more interesting/current events that I wan't to talk about instead. So to conclude our story as briefly as possible:
I attended the University of Plymouth in the UK after I was accepted into the Marine Science MSc program. I learned when I arrived that they had a MRes program dealing specifically with Marine Biology so I switched into that (at the last second). I met a lot of great people in that program, and I enjoyed it for the most part. After a semester of courses we chose our dissertations projects. My research looked at the development of diving behaviour in grey seal pups under the supervision of Dr. Kimberley Bennett and Dr. Mark Briffa. The project required sitting at a desk and watching and classifying hundreds of hours of video footage of seals held in captivity at the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews. Two bright spots during this trial of grainy video were the postgraduate conference in Belfast and my trip to St. Andrews. I was lucky enough to be accepted to present my project at the 12th Annual Marine Biological Association postgraduate conference at Queens University Belfast. I was invited to give a talk on my subject (because it was relating to seals which people thought would be interesting, I hope they weren't too disappointed) which was fun (although I didn't think so at the time). The conference was a great experience and I enjoyed meeting and listening to all the attendees and invited speakers. Earlier in the year I had visited the Sea Mammal Research Unit in St. Andrews to talk to them about the methods they used to collect the data I was working with. While there I was also able to assist on one of their research projects, which meant working with the seals, which was a lot of fun. Following these excursions I returned to Plymouth and locked myself away in my computer lab until the end of September when I handed in my thesis. After that I was forced (for monetary reasons) to return the the United States, and I completed my viva successfully on November 5th. I was informed later that I had earned my Master's by Research with Merit in Marine Biology. Currently I am living in New York looking for jobs in marine biology. My interests are in marine mammals and reptiles and focus mainly on conservation, fisheries interaction/by-catch, sound and light pollution, habitat monitoring, and behavioural research.
Thank you for sticking with me through that long winded, sometimes rambling explanation of how I ended up here. Please check back again as we will now move on to more interesting topics. Also please check out my friend's podcast premièring tomorrow January 7th. Its called The Imposter check out the link below for a sneak preview:
https://soundcloud.com/amir-fogel/the-imposter-episode-i-promo
It is said to contain interesting sciency type stuff so give it a look. I may be appearing in an episode or two (still working out the details) so look out for that as well. Thanks again bye everybody.
No comments:
Post a Comment