For Women's History Month this March, we're celebrating Isla Mar's women in science! Dive in as we get to know what inspires them, what energizes them, and what gives them hope for the future.
Meet Dr. Chelsea Harms-Tuohy | Marine Scientist
Why do you love the ocean?
As a scientist, I love the ocean because it is one of the Last Frontiers here on our planet, so one of the places that we still know very little about and it gives us an opportunity to always learn something new.
Why do you love your job?
One of the things that I love about my job is getting to interact with students and meet early-career scientists that are just as excited and eager to get to work in this field as I - still am - and as I was before getting to where I am today. And it's exciting when I get emails from high school students or students that are early in their undergraduate degrees wanting to know how to get going in this type of job. That's always really exciting to me just to see there are other people out there who are just as passionate and just as interested and just as driven to do something a little bit different in this field and to try something new.
What’s your favorite part of work?
One of my favorite types of fieldwork is doing coral reef restoration. That is a really gratifying type of work, to be able to plant corals to the reef and then revisit them months later and see that they're growing and doing really well and then revisit them years later and see that they have contributed to creating more structure on the reef itself. I find that is a really exciting part of fieldwork and the type of field work that continues to keep me optimistic and hopeful for the future of our oceans.
Tell us about marine biology
One thing that I want folks to know about the field of marine biology is that it's a very dynamic and very broad, wide-ranging field with multiple different facets to it. So, we aren't all just doing the same thing - not every marine biologist studies fish, not every marine biologist studies sea turtles or corals. So, there's a lot of different and unique ways that you can get involved and find what really interests you.
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