Ocean Conservation Career Is Not A Straight Path...and that's okay

1:00:00 If you're thinking of becoming a marine biologist, marine conservationist, do you know how you're gonna plan out your ocean conservation career? Do you know how easy or hard it is to attain a career in ocean conservation? Well, we're gonna talk about it on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast because this is something that I'm gonna ask you questions because this is something that we don't really talk about. And I did a presentation earlier last week where I talked to some high school kids and I asked them the same question. It was really interesting to hear some of their answers. So we're gonna talk about that on this episode. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

1:00:40 I'm your host Andrew Lewin. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about ocean conservation careers. Your ocean conservation career. If you're listening to this episode, you're probably thinking out. At some point, you want to work in ocean conservation. That could include marine biology, marine conservation, that could include genetics, that could include, you know, a lot of different science biology, that could include oceanography, physics, chemistry, it could include a whole slew of things, business management, entrepreneurship, anything. Ocean conservation career really comes down to anything. But there are certain things that you have to ask yourself when you are considering.

1:01:23 This is a lot for high school students, high school students, a lot for university students or recent graduates, whether you have a graduate degree or undergraduate degree, or even just people who are trying to pivot mid-career, someone who's pivoted a number of times during my career. You want to make sure that you understand how you can benefit the field of ocean conservation and how you can say, "Hey, I'm going to have an ocean conservation career because I have, I bring this skill set or this experience that can benefit what's needed." And I'm going to say it's not always science. It's not always, we don't necessarily need more marine biologists. And I think that encapsulates a lot because I've spoken to a lot of people who are mid-career, like, "Hey, I want to do what marine biologists do.

1:02:09 I want to get into ocean conservation and protect sharks or protect the ocean. So I'm going to go back for a four-year degree." Well, look, that's great. And if you have the money to do it, and that's really what you want to do, go ahead, go back to school, mid-career, whatever you want to do, and do your thing. And work your butt off because you probably know what you want at this point. And that could be a marine biology career and you can excel at it. And I think I applaud you. But you don't always have to do something in science. If you come from a banking background or economic background or business background, you can benefit it in many different ways and probably succeed financially at it quite a bit. You know, I think we look at the scale of where ocean conservation pay is.

1:02:49 And that's what a lot of people say. It's like when I grew up and I'm like, "Yeah, I want to be a marine biologist." Like, "Can you make money as a marine biologist?" And the short answer is, "Yes, you can." But you have to, it depends on the job that you're working, right? Like a lot of the people, when we talk about marine biology, we think about working on the ocean or in the ocean. Scuba diving, snorkeling, you know, putting down broths, putting down cameras, you know, ROV work. Those are the fun things you see on National Geographic and Shark Week and all that kind of stuff. And that happens. Like we see tagging studies, we see ROV studies, we see drone studies, we see all these cool fancy tech studies. And then when you just get down and we go do scuba diving or snorkeling and trailing behind a boat, it's pretty cool stuff. You get to do pretty cool stuff.

1:03:34 But then on the other hand, we also do like water quality marine, like taking water samples, you know, getting into some pretty bad water if you have to and taking samples. Like so there's a lot of different things that you can do and there's different sectors that you can go in. And there's different types of jobs within the field of ocean conservation. You can have a variety of different ocean conservation careers within the ocean conservation career if you get my drift. But the thing that you have to ask is really two things that you have to ask yourself. You have to ask yourself, how much do I want to get paid? The second thing is to support the lifestyle that I lead. So you want to make sure you get enough financially and then enough to have a good lifestyle that you want.

1:04:15 Those two come hand in hand and it's not always asked when kids or adults are asked are saying, hey, I want to go into marine biology or ocean conservation. I was like, great. What's your lifestyle going to be like? What do you want as your lifestyle? Do you truly understand the lifestyle? Because when I was a high school kid, you couldn't tell me anything. Nothing was going to stop me from being a marine biologist. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even when people are like, yeah, well, the pay is not that bad because I always thought I'm just going to figure it out. I'm just going to figure out and get some pay. And I'll be honest. I had some decent pay when I worked for the government. I had some decent pay when I worked for a private consultant. I had some decent pay when you work for a nonprofit.

1:04:56 You may not be getting like a huge pay depending on the level you're working at. If you're looking more on the administrative side as a manager or even like an executive director, you can get paid a lot of money. You can get paid a good amount of money to have a pretty comfortable life and not have to worry about bills. But if you're working in the field all the time as a technician, like a field technician, having a lot of fun out in the ocean all the time or on a river or on a lake or whatever, you really have to like it. You may not get paid as much. You may get paid a decent wage depending on what entity you're working for. But you're not going to be paying getting paid a ton. And it's surprising for a lot of people and depending on where you are, it's surprising that you get paid so low in certain places.

1:05:44 But it all depends on how much money that company or how much funding that organization or department is going to get. And you're really you either benefit or you don't benefit off of that. And some people will go from job to job, not necessarily because they don't can't find a full time position, but maybe the funding doesn't allow for it. So especially in the nonprofit organization, everything is based on funding. So if the organization runs out of funding or there's an end date to that funding, you'll often see job ads that are saying, hey, yeah, like, you know, this is a two year position or this is a one year position or this is a six month position or this is a three year position.

1:06:29 You just may not be able to get it right away, you know, and get more experience and move on to the next nonprofit organization until hopefully you find a full time job. But even then, some of the pays are not the greatest, especially when it comes to science, which I find surprising because that's what a lot of that are based on a lot of these organizations are based on. But communications marketing operations executive director, all those kinds of those kind of jobs typically pay pretty well. I applied to one job that had the posting was like over it was a communication job. It was over $100,000. That's Canadian. Like it was like $115,000. There's another communication job.

1:07:11 There was like 130 to $150,000. Those are like communication director positions or senior communications director positions. Those are pretty big, you know, but program officers and things like that. Those tend to be lower on the totem pole when you're talking about nonprofit organization or if you're talking about government, it's a little it's a little higher depending on the government. And if they're actually hiring these days, but, you know, they they tend to have like specific positions. I know the Canadian government is unionized. So they have they actually just post, you know, exactly what everybody's making depending on how many years they've worked in that position as well as what position they're working, like what level they are. They're at like Biola, just one, Biola, just two physical scientists, one, three, six, or five, it goes up to five, four, five so that you can tell how much the higher the number, the more they get paid, the more responsibility they have.

1:08:02 So more administrative they have. Now, I know some people who've gotten into that level and they're like, Oh, yeah, no, I don't actually like this kind of role. I want to go back down and do the fun stuff, but earn, try and like get your, get the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak. Right. So you try and maximize the amount of money you can get without having to do too many boring office things. So as someone would tell me in the, in the industry. So it all depends on your preference and what you want to make and how much you want to make and how much life. But if you're planning it out and you want to look at the jobs, you got to plan it out. You got to be like, look, I want to make I want to make a good amount of money to support my lifestyle. And that could be having a family that could be having a house or an apartment or move around a little bit with your partner.

1:08:44 If you have a partner or not having a partner, it all depends on the lifestyle that you want to live. And they're all doable within the construct of the ocean conservation career. You just have to do the research and speak to people who have different types of careers. There are people who go into the field for like six weeks at a time, seven weeks at a time. There are people who go for like over, over three months at a time. You know, they're away from whoever their loved ones, whether it's a family, whether, you know, it's like an extended family or friends or whatever, or it's like a close to their family, their, their kids, their, their partner. It all depends, right? It all depends on the job that you have the other. Some people have like a nine to five and they go to work and they come home every day.

1:09:26 They get to participate in all their kids activities and all that kind of stuff. And they love it. And that's, and that's great too. Whatever the lifestyle is and whatever the money is those you have to know what that is that will allow you to dictate kind of life. But what you can't predict and this happens to a lot of people is the decisions that come in life that will make you pivot, whether you like it or not. So when that can be positive, some that can be negative, right? All depends on the human psyche. It all depends on the person and the situations are all unique. But there are certain times in certain situations where you have to make a decision. And it's sometimes the personal decision. Sometimes it's a business decision or a career decision, but it will affect you.

1:10:08 And it really just depends. You have no idea what will happen. And some of it, they'll be hard decisions to make at the time. And then you'll figure out whether you want, like whether you agreed with that decision or not after that. And I'll tell you mine. And this is what I told that this great nine girls school that I was at or this girl school that I was at that I presented in front of great nine kids. And we discussed my career and I didn't want to just tell them about living. I worked for government and I worked for a private consultant. I went back to government and I worked here and I worked in the US and I worked there. I could talk about the fun times and all that kind of stuff. But I want to talk about the decision making because like when we think about marine biology, especially like I knew when I was 14, I want to be a marine biologist.

1:10:50 And that's all I ever wanted to be. So as I grew up, then I met podcasting, but I'm still in marine biology, podcasting. But as I kind of grew up through my high school, that's all I was thinking. I was like, I'm going to go to university. I'm going to get an undergraduate degree. Then I'm going to go to grad school and get a master's and I'm going to get a PhD and then I'm going to work either as a professor or some research. And I'm going to travel around the world and do research on every animal that I want to do. And I would have full control over that. And that's fine dream. That could happen. That could happen. It could happen. Doesn't happen often, but it could happen. But what I didn't expect is that at the end of my university career, which I by the end, I had no idea what I wanted to do in marine biology.

1:11:33 I met the love of my life who ended up becoming my wife. But what I didn't realize is that when I like when I grew up, I was going to travel the world. When she grew up, she was going to stay here in Ontario to be close to family because her lifestyle was raise a family, be close to family so family can help and be a part of that. So I met my wife, fell in love. We both fell in love. And I'm like, OK, like, hey, I'm going down to Louisiana and I'm going to be on a boat for like eight months. Now come back every couple of months. Like, OK, we'll just figure out from there. And I fell more in love and more in love. And we both fell more in love with each other. And then I came home and I said, hey, I'm going to do a master's. I got offered a master's, but it's not here in Ontario.

1:12:15 It's out in Halifax. So we got to move. Can we move to Halifax together? So we moved to Halifax. I said, I'll give you two. Give me two years there. I'll get my master's and then we'll come back here and we'll and we'll start working on our family and get married and start working on our family. You know, we were set for like this is as soon as we met, like we knew we were going to get married like that. This is my one always has been always will be. And we came back after two years. I got off your PhD and I rejected it because I'm like, I got to go back to Ontario. I promise my wife. I go back to Ontario. Got married and, you know, we, you know, we started to have kids and, you know, that one thing led to another. We the kids are starting to grow up. And, you know, I had to do different jobs for marine biology and find jobs within Ontario and started a podcast and all this kind of stuff. And I don't regret any of it at the time.

1:13:02 I didn't love it all the time because I didn't love all the jobs that I had. But I don't regret it because now my my kids know their grandparents and their uncles and my sister-in-law and like the aunts and cousins and stuff. And they love it. Right. We had a great life. We're having a great life. And so I, you know, that was the choice that I had to face. That was the big pivot that I had to face. It changed the course of my career from thinking that I'd be on the East Coast or West Coast of Canada or the U.S. or even just travel around the world and doing marine biology stuff as much of a dream of that was I came back to Ontario where there's no ocean. There's the Great Lakes, the Sweetwater Ocean, but there's no ocean. And and I had a career here, which is very different from a lot of my colleagues and friends that are in that are in this industry.

1:13:49 But that's the decision that I made. That's the adaptation I had to make. I didn't expect it to happen. And there are a lot of people who have different decisions to make. So there are some people who have taken, you know, they've taken the academic route. They've decided to go to undergraduate, graduate, master's, PhD, and then become a professor. And when they become a professor, they've reached their dream like this is amazing. And they realize, I actually don't like this job. And you're like, oh, what do I do? You know, some people move, especially to be a professor someplace and they don't love it. Let's say it happens to everybody, but there's some people who don't. And I've had I've had friends who have had that. And then they had to figure out what to do after that. They had to figure out where to go and what to do. Did they move from that place? Do they stay as a professor there and maybe not like it as much and be miserable? Or can they figure out if they're going to be happy?

1:14:38 It's been it's very difficult the time and whatever decision they make, that's the decision to make is not right or wrong. It's just a decision they decide to make. But these these little pivot moments are extremely important and they happen more than you think, especially at 40. I reached 40 and I pivoted a couple of times. And I know a lot of people who have put I know some people who had a career in one thing, decided to become a teacher in another started their teaching, you know, practice at like 40 years old. Like there's so many different ways you can. Some people became cops or fire men or women or people like it's all different things that you can do. But 40 seems to be that age where people pivot.

1:15:21 I don't know if it's the beginning of the mid life crisis, but it's that that's just the pivot that I've seen people make. So it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be in the same job all the time. There's probably not going to be the same job all the time, especially the way jobs are going these days. And and it's not necessarily that you are going to have the path that you think you're going to have. That's going to meander quite a bit. I co-host a podcast called the Beyond Jaws podcast with Dr. David Ebert. And we interview shark scientists and practitioners and conservationists all the time. Like every couple of weeks we put out an episode and we talk about their career. And when we talk about their career, a lot of times it meanders, they go in and out of studying sharks. So they'll study other fish or they'll say something completely different or they'll go somewhere completely different.

1:16:04 Or they'll get out of the industry altogether just to make some money and then come back and they and they do that. And they proudly mentioned that because when you see their bit, a lot of these people are very well published and they're they're very well known. But people don't know about the intricacies of their career because they've just never heard it before. They don't know because all their reading is their papers. So we have them on a podcast again. We have them on a podcast to get to hear it. They're like, oh, OK, so so and so had this wonderful career, but it was in and out a little bit. It wasn't perfect. OK, mine doesn't have to be either. Your career does not your ocean conservation career does not have to be perfect. Let me repeat that your ocean conservation career does not have to be perfect. It's not a straight path. It's going to meander a bunch and you have to really you have to accept that.

1:16:47 And maybe even like just just kind of know that it's coming. Anticipate the meanderness. That's a word. I don't know. But like you have to learn that because if you don't and you expect to be straight and something happens, you're going to think your career is a failure. And I would say as a coach, I always tell my kids like my my players fail, fail often, fail fast, fail often and learn from those mistakes or learn from those decisions and then get better and be better and you'll be stronger in the end. So the whole point of this podcast is having an ocean conservation career will make you stronger, will make you better as a person, but it won't be a straight path. It will meander. Be ready for it, anticipate it and enjoy the heck out of the process because it's a fun process.

1:17:33 There's ups and downs and it's a great story and tell your story. Come on this podcast. Tell your story. Go on the Beyond Jobs podcast. Tell your story. We always want to hear people's stories because we want to share the experiences so that when people go through themselves, they're not alone. You're not alone. So many people had different types of stories. So I want to just mention that to you because I think it's really important that we share that, you know, ocean conservation careers are not a straight path. And I want you to know that. So for me to you, you're welcome. Enjoy the process. If you ever need help, reach out. I'm always there to help you out. You can DM me at how to protect the ocean. You can also go over to our YouTube channel and subscribe and hit that notification button to see all different types of episodes.

1:18:15 As I mentioned the last episode, I'm doing things a little differently lately. I'm recording the raw audio podcast first and then I'm recording a more of a cleaned up version, more succinct version because YouTubers don't have the multitasking ability that audio podcasters do because the way the apps and the way the platform is. So they tend to watch more. So they tend to be a little less time and a little bit more edited or not edited, but just succinct and yeah, and we'll just see you soon. Those edited. This is the last non edited video for a while. I'll be editing more videos in a little bit, but they'll be coming out for a bunch. But I just I just want to get this off my chest because I think it's really important. I found that the kids that I taught last last week that I presented in front of, they really enjoyed it. They really took it to heart. And a lot of the questions that came out were about confidence. It's like, how did how confident were you every time? Like, do you ever question the path you were taking? And my answer to that was yes, yes, I did every single day. I still do. And I'm still questioning it because you never know if you're taking the right path, but there is no right path. Your path is the right path. So, you know, own that. Okay. So anyway, that's it for today's episode. If you want to get a hold of that, I'm going to be doing a video on how to do it.

1:19:35 I can't really just I can just say that, or what it looks like. This video has an awesome feature on it, but the mph method page, hearingcentered hosting Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the true north strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation