Life Sciences is the biology department of a marine university, which means it is organized around organisms and the water they live in rather than around the traditional divisions of a biology faculty. We teach marine biology, fisheries science and aquaculture as one connected group, because in practice a person working on any of them needs the other two.
What we work on
Coastal ecology. The intertidal transect survey at Prentice has run continuously since 2004 and is the longest dataset the university holds. It underpins work on disturbance and recovery, on restoration targets, and on the question of whether "recovery" means what the management literature assumes it means.
Marine mammal science. Population assessment, acoustic and visual survey methods, and the statistics of estimating something you can only see when it surfaces. This is a graduate-level research area, and the master's program that sits on it is the department's main graduate offering.
Fisheries and aquaculture. Stock assessment for populations with good data and for the much larger number without it, and shellfish hatchery production, including the water chemistry problems that have made hatchery output less predictable over the last decade.
Molecular methods. Environmental DNA and its honest limits, developed alongside the survey work rather than as a replacement for it.
Teaching
Field work starts in the first year and does not stop. Students in the department can expect to spend nights at Prentice from their first spring, and the courses that involve the most cold water are consistently the ones that fill first.
The department contributes the biology core to Environmental Science and teaches into the marine policy programs where a governance question turns on a population question, which is most of the time.
Working with us
We supervise graduate students in marine ecology, marine mammal science, fisheries science and aquaculture. Prospective graduate students should write to a specific member of faculty rather than to the department. Undergraduate research places are usually filled from the transect walks.