The Marine Biologist's Worldview
A Marine Scientist's Philosophy on Life in the Sea
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French writer and aviator, wrote: “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
It is this same spirit by which the body of knowledge constituting marine biology grows.
For the Love of the Game
No matter what their specialty – classification, physiology, biochemistry, genetics, energetics, development, behavior, ecology – marine biologists are fundamentally fascinated by the ocean and its creatures. They work to be near, on, or in, the waters harboring the creatures they love. Whether they are poking at limpets in tide pools, coring sponges on deep scuba dives, or observing whales from a skiff, theirs is a wonder born of personal experience, schooling, and perhaps the mission of their workplace: government agency, academia, or private consulting firm.
As such, they are typically non-commercial. Theirs is in essence a philosophy common to all biologists, terrestrial or marine: Respect Life, no matter what its form. The worth of an organism is found in its contribution to humanity’s understanding of life, not necessarily in any possible commercial value.
Ecology and the Census of Marine Life
Marine biologists are all too aware of the knowledge gaps in humanity's understanding of life. At the time of this writing, there are thought to be c. 230,000 species of marine animals identified worldwide. The number of species as yet unknown, if including small organisms and protists, may number another million or more.
Each of these species is distinct in some way, and thus lies tangled in the web of ocean life: a node anchoring millions of varying relationships within the sea. This study of the relationships between organisms and their environment is called ecology, and most marine biologists will dabble if not study it outright as ecologists.
Marine ecologists recognize that life forms are generally strongly influenced by the physical and chemical aspects of the ocean, as well as by the plants and animals with which they interact. These interactions in turn affect the ocean itself. Thus the flora and fauna of a region’s waters (and collectively the world) are constituents in very complex, biodiverse systems.
Evolutionary and Planetary Bonds
Marine ecosystems, and the organisms themselves, have evolutionary histories; they have generally been on the planet far longer than humans. A marine biologist thus considers how life’s web, driven by natural selection, stretches both forwards and backwards in time. This lends yet another level of complexity beyond that of any specific structure or history.
The result? Marine biologists see the ocean world as far richer, complex, and fragile, than most people even imagine.
It is this vast, rich sense of time and relationship which prompts them to envision common bonds between humans and sea life, be it bacteria, kelp, crustacean, or whale. It grounds their understanding of the implications hosted by Darwin’s worldview – principally, that all life, including humans, evolved on earth, and no species can live apart from the planet upon which it evolved.
Philosophy
This belief in, and valuation of, common bond stands as the fundamental aspect of a marine biologist. It shapes their wonder of the sea, the life it harbors, even their own immersion in a life-path. And it fuels a conviction that this sense of bond should – must! – shape decisions about the kind of relationships humanity has with the sea and its denizens.
Will humans choose to be fellows and stewards – or renegades and destroyers?
Sources
Census of Marine Life. 2009. Making Ocean Life Count: About the Marine Census. May 9 2009.
Janovy, J. Jr. 2004. On Becoming A Biologist, 2nd Edition. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln.
Southwood, T.R.E. 2003. The Story Of Life. Oxford University Press, Inc. New York.
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