The field of marine biology has a lot to love, from the fish and sharks that swim through the depths to the corals and kelp and growing things that define ecosystems and growth. But for me, it’s always been about turtles. At the age of five, I dreamed of turtles after seeing them for the first time in a BBC documentary. Six years later, after an awful lot of pleading, my parents let me bring home my first pet turtle Bonk. At the age of fifteen, I got into a high school program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to work with hatchling Diamondback turtles, building incubators for the eggs. At seventeen, I got into that same university to learn as much as possible about these creatures and the worlds they inhabit. I’m still learning as I work my way through my master’s and eventually my doctorate. Marine biology, as my STEM major of choice, is a fascinating field of study. Equal parts complex analysis in a lab and wading or swimming through the field, it can take you across the world or right into your own backyard. Unfortunately, most of what you find is the same story, over and over: our oceans are in trouble. For the most part, that seems to be our fault. Marine biologists spend a lot of time in the lab trying to work on what we can do to fix things. You can only do so much though, so most of us specialize in a particular organism or type of organism. Speaking of working in the lab, I find myself confronted with an incredible range of work to be done here, both in terms of research and conservation. Traveling to the coast to work with these turtles, specifically the Diamondback Terrapin that I work with via my PI, can be a costly endeavor, but even a small amount of money can go a long way. It can fund conservation, or classwork, as we work to capture gravid females every year and raise their young in the lab until they are strong enough to survive on their own, replenishing their numbers in an ecosystem that’s been hit hard by human activity while teaching students like myself what it takes to maintain those ecosystems. Advancing technology helps, too, as I work with a veritable fleet of drones to capture footage of nesting Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles so we can preserve their way of life. These are important projects to me, but I’m certainly not so overconfident as to think I’m ready to get out there and do it all on my own just yet. I still need to be able to put myself through my classes so that I’m equipped with the knowledge and experience I need to do good science, conserve these species that I adore, and penultimately be able to teach these ideas to others. I remember how comforting it was to learn so much about turtles growing up, and how awestruck I was by them. I want to give that experience to other people, to inspire them to protect and learn about our oceans and their incredible creatures. That's what makes this field so important. Science is about discovering things, knowing things, and bringing the stories of how things work and why things are to the ears and minds of people. I find myself loving the stories of the turtles I work with, so I'm learning what I can so that I can go forward and teach others about them too.

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