Marine Biology for Middle & High School (college, degree, environmental science)
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Hello,
We are in the process of moving and can move anywhere but I would like for it to be in an area that has good schools for a young marine biology student. She wants to train and work with dolphins and I would love to be in an area that has a good public (or private) school for this. Also, the area should have some outside classes either at a college or other organization locally to attend to get extra learning. Have any ideas? Any other suggestions for Marine Biology a plus!!!
Last edited by toobusytoday; 08-29-2019 at 07:41 PM..
How old is she? It makes no sense to have your family's living circumstances dictated by what might very well be a passing fancy by a teenager. When you were 15, what did you want to be when you grew up? Most people, at age 25, are doing something completely unrelated to what they thought they wanted when they enrolled as college freshmen.
I don't want to sound insulting, but people who say they want to be marine biologists so they can work with dolphins sound like they haven't thought very deeply about what the field of marine biology really consists of, they just see themselves doing something glamorous.
There is plenty to read independently about marine biology, and formal study can wait until she has the prerequisites and a more fully-matured life-view about what she wants to do.
To add to jtur88, I have known many young girls (mine included) who wanted to train dolphins. It's one of those romanticized jobs that sound perfect in the young girl's mind. None of those I have known have actually gone on to study anything remotely close to marine biology.
On the other hand, I have a niece who has a degree in environmental sciences and is finishing up on receiving her master diver's certification. She's worked on islands off both coasts over the past 8 years and loves it.
There is a summer camp in Maine that is intensely focused on marine life and environment. It may be a starting point. There are more summer camps and even a semester school that focuses mainly on marine life and environment. They are all pretty intense.
Try one of those so she gets a feel of what kind of work is involved. I think training dolphins would fall more in the category of animal behavior rather than marine biology.
We are in the process of moving and can move anywhere but I would like for it to be in an area that has good schools for a young marine biology student. She wants to train and work with dolphins and I would love to be in an area that has a good public (or private) school for this. Also, the area should have some outside classes either at a college or other organization locally to attend to get extra learning. Have any ideas? Any other suggestions for Marine Biology a plus!!!
I am a teacher at a marine science magnet high school and I also work as a research oceanographer for NOAA.
First, dolphin trainers do not need a marine biology degree. As a matter of fact, its a long standing joke in the marine biology community the amount of eye rolling that occurs when we hear the words "dolphin trainer".
If she wants this job she should major in animal behavior/biology at college. She should also be prepared to work unpaid as an intern for years before getting a paid position.
The majority of my students go on to marine engineering or marine science careers but none of them are dolphin trainers.
Thank you for all your comments and suggestions. First I would like to say to jtur88 I am sorry you feel this way. I am not sure if you can remember back to being young and what your dreams were but did you ever have someone in your life help you be "guided" to that dream?? IT WAS MY DREAM to work with dolphins when I was younger and I took a Marine Biology class in high school. Now you would think that someone such as a teacher would be positive and helpful towards any student that would show great interest in going into the marine biology field. Let me tell you what he said to me. He said you DON'T want to go into this field as there will not be many opportunities for those that do. I listened to him and BELIEVED him. He was a teacher and I believed he was right. He shut my dreams down that day and I switched over to my "back up" field of working with horses. I did go on to college to persue an Equine Degree (yes, there is such a thing) and that school shut me down in a different way. They lied to all the equestrian field students and cheated us out of a proper instructor.
It upset me so much that I did not go back. I am here to say I will NEVER let this happen to either of my children. They are 10 and 11 (soon to be 11 and 12) and I want to help guide them to how they feel INSIDE, even if it ISN'T where they will be in 10 years. At least I can say I helped them find their dreams rather than shutting them down and not giving them the opportunity to explore what they feel inside that it is they want to do. I want to give them all the possibilies that I can and that includes going on summer excursions to be with dolphins and finding vet camps that my other daughter can attend. When I was young, I was told I was stupid by my mother and after awhile you begin to believe it but thankfully my dad negated it said that I wasn't. She explained things differently than my dad and I understood from him but not her.
We all have different learning abilities and it is the parent's job (or teacher's) to find out what that is. It is my wish that more parents would listen to their children and help them explore the possibilites that they are feeling inside. Do whatever possible and if money is an issue please contact someone there (where ever it is they want to go) and explain your situation. It is our jobs as parents to provide the best possibilities for our children to help them grow and explore and nuture what their true calling is from within. It is not our job to shut it down by telling them NO that isn't possible or NO you don't want to go into that field or NO you are too young to know what you want to do. That is not our right and if we love our children as we should then PLEASE help them along to find out what it is that they love doing even if it isn't where they will end up.
At least you can say you helped guide them rather than I did nothing about it. OH and by the way, this is an interesting fact I found out recently. People who like horses usually like dolphins just the same. This I find true in myself as well as my one daughter. I have NEVER said at any time you should like dolphins or you should like horses. It's something born within and even if she too doesn't end up working with dolphins I am going to be glad that I helped nuture her dreams. Happy parenting!!
Last edited by toobusytoday; 08-29-2019 at 07:14 PM..
Reason: Added paragraphs for easier reading
We are in the process of moving and can move anywhere but I would like for it to be in an area that has good schools for a young marine biology student. She wants to train and work with dolphins and I would love to be in an area that has a good public (or private) school for this. Also, the area should have some outside classes either at a college or other organization locally to attend to get extra learning. Have any ideas? Any other suggestions for Marine Biology a plus!!!
Well if your kids are 10 and 11 and you want them to experience their dreams and would move as their dreams change (about 10 years I guess) then I highly suggest you rent and not buy a home.
Is it really your child's dream to train dolphins? Or, is your child living out your dream that wasn't fulfilled by you? Most kids rarely have the same really specialized dream that their parents had.
As to the other poster shutting down you and your child's dream, if its really significant then you cannot be shut down. I tried to shut down my daughter's dream of studying Peace and Global studies in college because I knew it wouldn't give her any skills at all when she left and she would flounder around and around looking for some kind of work vaguely related to it. But because it was a real dream, nothing could stop her and she actually spent a good bit of time in the middle east pursuing it. Eventually, after 12 years on-going now, she's beginning to wish that she'd actually listened to my advice, since the pursuit of this dream has cost her 1/3 of her life and she's no further on in a career than she was when she graduated.
On the other hand, with lots of luck, and willingness to take on difficult tasks, and work her tail off, your youngster may be able to do exactly what she wants. But she may need to go a route such as a marine mammal veterinarian. Training dolphins is a fun job, but its not a career unless she has a PhD in marine mammal development or a VMD in the same area. My son decide early on that he wanted to be a nuclear physicist. The number of people who actual get to the PhD level here and who are able to accomplish something in the field is even smaller. But with great luck, straight "A"s and multiple internships at the just the right places, he's very close to fulfilling his dream. But at each juncture, he asked himself what the education that he was taking would do for him in the long term and where he would need to go next. He knew that he could have been a technician in nuclear physics, but to really go somewhere, he would need to know and work with the right people, and have a PhD.
My advice to you is to help your daughter think further ahead than simply having fun training dolphins. The number of places in the world where this takes places is exceedingly small. She needs real guidance about where she wants to go, and with your experience you should be able to help. But try to stay realistic for her. Dreams that have very narrow chances for getting employed can squash just as much as other things.
I also worked for years as a marine fisheries biologist for NOAA in Alaska and Seattle before my wife's career brought us to Texas. I now teach HS science including marine biology.
I also frequently get female students who dream of becoming dolphin trainers down at Sea World which is not far from us. But that's not science much less marine biology. And those jobs aren't careers.
Fact of the matter is that any HS student who is serious about a career in marine science needs to be thinking about getting into a good college and getting a BS in biology or chemistry. One needs to get the basic science background first before specializing. If the student is still interested in marine science by their senior year of college then they would be applying to graduate programs in oceanography or marine biology at one of the dozen or so schools around the country that have decent graduate programs in that area. 8+ years after graduating from HS your newly minted PhD will be ready for the tough job market in marine science. And if they chose to study chemical or physical oceanography they will probably be in much better shape than if they chose marine biology where the job prospects are more scarce.
Rather than looking around for a school with a HS program in marine biology you would be better off finding summer opportunities for your daughter. Like one of these:
There are a wide variety of marine biology summer study opportunities around the country for HS students. They might be expensive but certainly less expensive than moving across the country for a HS science class.
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Any other suggestions for Marine Biology a plus!!! 
OH and by the way, this is an interesting fact I found out recently. People who like horses usually like dolphins just the same. This I find true in myself as well as my one daughter. I have NEVER said at any time you should like dolphins or you should like horses. It's something born within and even if she too doesn't end up working with dolphins I am going to be glad that I helped nuture her dreams. Happy parenting!!
