Marine biology specifically is “one of the exceptions [in the STEM field] where there is a very strong female presence...which is awesome, you feel so empowered,” said marine biology major Emmalee Moore, a junior from Seward, Alaska.
Moore, along with four other marine biology students, expressed there is a strong female presence within the marine biology program here at BYU–Hawaii. In the marine biology major at BYUH, female students outnumber the men. This is very different from most STEM fields in the United States.
According to a 2019 American Community Survey from the U. S. Census Bureau, the STEM field national average consist of 26 percent women and 84 percent men. However, this is not unique just to BYUH. According to the Career Explorer website, 69 percent of marine biologists are women, and 31 percent are men.
Moore said she thinks there are more women studying marine biology because for women, there is a “nurturing connection to the environment, especially marine biology. There is definitely a lot of emotion connected to [nature] as well, which I think is a huge strength.”
J Ungos, a junior from Melbourne, Florida, majoring in marine biology said, “Women are on a different level of passion towards nature.” She added women are more nurturing and women want to see the environment taken care of.
To further explain this, Luckaia Strand, a senior from Cedar City, Utah, majoring in marine biology, said, “I feel like naturally, we have a very nurturing side to us as women, and I think we have a love and care for the planet and animals.
”Something Moore has noticed is while there are a lot of women in the marine biology field, sometimes it seems like men have most of the leadership positions in the field. Ungos agreed. While interning at Brevard Zoo, she noticed the curators and directors were all men, despite the keepers being almost half women. “It felt very male-dominated,” she said.
However, Ungos explained she has never felt disadvantaged while being a woman attending BYUH. She stated she feels a camaraderie with the other women in the program.
Cayden Eliason, a junior majoring in both marine biology and biology education from Howard, South Dakota, said, “It is interesting how society and history have come and told [women] that we’re not as smart or capable as men, when really we just haven’t had an opportunity to show that because we’ve been having to stay at home.” She said now women have more educational opportunities.
For Eliason, however, while attending BYUH, it has not been a competitive environment but “very collaborative,” she shared. Eliason explained each student has their own specific set of passions they want to pursue and they each are “working together” to help the ocean.
For Strand, she said she did feel disadvantaged and overlooked studying science in high school but not while attending school at BYUH. She said here she feels “very empowered. ”For Moore, those within the marine biology field have had to deal with “significantly less sexism than in other fields.” Moore said she has had to deal with little sexism within her field, but it is still good for everyone to be aware because sexism still does happen.
There are organizations attempting to help with this issue, such as Women in Ocean Sciences, a non-profit whose purpose on its website says, “Supporting women is protecting the ocean - we’re creating an international movement to elevate the female voices working to protect our marine environment.”
A Filipina, Ungos is part of an organization called Minorities in Shark Sciences, which “offers a lot of opportunities including scholarships or paid experiences,” she shared. Another one of the powerhouse female students is Anameere Tennaba, a senior from Kiribati studying marine biology. She shared she plans to go back to her country to educate her people about their main resource, the ocean. With fishing being their main source of food, she said she wants to go back and enforce the laws of fishing.
Studying here has “opened my mind to see that we as people don’t have to destroy the ecosystem and biodiversity,“ said Tennaba. “We just need to know our limits in taking the fish.” She said she wants to educate people on the species and the overfishing. “They tend to take any size of fish,” she said.
Being an IWORK student, she said she is very grateful for the scholarship because her parents could not afford her education. She said she loves the professors she has worked with. Tennaba had the opportunity to intern researching the deep-sea animals in the Pacific, while she was on a boat for six weeks. She never got seasick the entire time because her father was a fisherman, and “instead of taking a bus, you take a boat,” said Tennaba.
Growing up in Kiribati and her background there helped her decide to continue her education at BYUH in marine biology. She shared on her internship she learned the sea can be used for more than food. There are many medicinal benefits the ocean provides.
Strand said she has always loved the ocean. Her parents called her a fish because she would spend all day in the water, said Strand. It was at age 7 when she learned what marine biology was and from then on she said she knew that was what she wanted to do. Today she plans to work at a Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, Strand shared.
For two summers in high school, she went to visit her aunt in Surf City, North Carolina, and worked at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, she shared. Strand said that is where her passion for sea turtles started.
For Strand, attending here was plan A with no plan B. She said she has enjoyed her experience here and is even the president of the Marine Biology Club. Her name, Luckaia Strand, has a lot of meaning, she shared.
According to Strand, her mom wanted to name her Kaia, which means “ocean” and “sent from heaven” in Hawaiian. “I was born pretty prematurely,” said Strand, and the odds were stacked against her. So her parents added “luck” to the first part of her name, hence Luckaia. Her last name even means “beach” in German, said Strand.
In conclusion, Strand said, “marine biology girls here are like a power team.”Ungos said she shares a similar passion for manatees as does Strand for sea turtles.
Growing up in Melbourne, Ungos said she was close to both a river and the ocean, so she grew up always learning and understanding wildlife, she explained. As she continues in her education, she said she has understood more about the purpose of the ocean and the importance it has to all humans.
Ungos plans to go into restoration after graduation. This is personal for her because she said she watched the Indian River Lagoon where she grew up get murkier and murkier. Ungos said she has read articles from 50 years ago explaining how clear the river used to be, and for Ungos it is “a dream of mine to one day see that happen again,” she said. Ungos believes that as humans, “our responsibility is to set boundaries of where we can go into it, to understand there are limits to what we can do,” she stated.
Moore said she is majoring in marine biology because as long as she can remember, she has loved the ocean. She grew up in a coastal town volunteering, working, and loving the Alaska SeaLife Center that conducts research, is an aquarium, and does rescue and rehabilitation, said Moore. She said even as a kindergartener she wanted to work at there.
For Moore, this is one of her biggest passions, and she attributes it to being raised near the ocean in Alaska where there is a really strong connection to nature. “It has always captivated me, and I always felt a really strong connection to it and a huge care for it,” said Moore.
Moore also does art, and she said the ocean and nature has been a big inspiration for her art. She said those passions feed off each other.
While deciding on which school to attend, she said she debated between staying within the Pacific Northwest or Alaska, or she could attend BYUH and learn about a whole new ocean ecosystem she knew nothing about. After graduation Moore plans to go back to the Alaska Sea Life Center, which is holding a position for her.
For as long as she can remember, Eliason said she has wanted to study the ocean. Eliason is unsure where it stemmed from because she was living in, “the most landlocked part of the United States,” she said. But her mom grew up in Northern Florida, and they would often go visit family out there and spend time in the ocean, said Eliason.
One time they went to the Georgia Aquarium, and it has been her dream to work there ever since, she said. That aquarium is the biggest in the United States, according to the Statista website.
For Eliason, she believes women love to study marine biology because they see the trouble humans are causing these helpless animals and they see the connection between human health and the ocean, she said. One of the biggest problems the ocean faces is pollution, she explained.