Question: what is a marine scientist?

Jack Whittle answered on 3 Mar 2023:

My job as a marine scientist involves working on projects like ports/harbours, offhsore wind farms and undersea cables and assessing the extent to which this process is going to impact the marine environment. We do this in a few ways, and it varies depending on the project. Wind farms for example, can impact many different marine animals, we call them ‘receptors’ as they are receptive to the impacts. To install a wind turbine, you often have to pile it into the seabed. This affects benthic organisms like marine invertebrates as you’re detsroying part of their habitat, but it also affects fish and marine mammals. This is because piling generates a really large amount of noise, which can be really damaging for these animals. So, we would survey the benthic environment by dropping a grab down to the seafloor, taking some sediment and seeing what’s living in it. Then we might be able to say that there are protected or endangered species present at the site, and construction might need to be halted. We can also survey marine mammals, seeing how many of which species are present, and we can make reccommendations as to how they minimise impacts to these animals. One of them is called ‘soft-start’ piling, which is where you initially start piling at a much lower intensity which generates much less noise, but it’s still enough noise to scare away mobile animals like fish and marine mammals. After a while, you can commence piling at full intensity, and it’s likely there are no animals in the vicinty to be affected. You would also usually have a marine mammal observer present during piling, a kind of lookout, to make sure none show up and who can stop the piling if one appears.