any marine biologists out there?

[Quinn]

I'm not much farther along the post-secondary road than you are, but my thoughts on this - to work in the area you're actually interested in, a doctorate appears to be a requisite. That's roughly a decade of post-secondary, if all goes well. I think that a popular area like marine biology would have a lot of applicants looking for a limited number of graduate positions, and that degree of competition could spell problems. Sometimes you can find other ways to work in the field you want. I know of a professor who researches cephalopods under the guise of comparative psychology (most comparative psychologists study primates and to a lesser degree higher functioning birds). Just my thoughts.

There are a number of marine biologists on RC and RDO, as I expect you are aware. You could try contacting them.