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Five students, four of whom arrived through an undergraduate degree in marine biology.
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The first cohort of the MS in Marine Mammal Science graduated in May. All five students have taken positions: two in agency stock assessment, one in consulting for offshore development, one with a conservation organization, and one continuing to doctoral study.
Lena Scholz, who directs the program, said the cohort's route in was as instructive as its destination. Four of the five came through an undergraduate degree in marine biology, one of them at Northmoor.
"This is the specialization people write to us about more than any other, and a lot of those letters come from students still in high school," Scholz said. "The answer we give them is that this is a graduate program for a reason, and that the way in is a bachelor's degree that gives you population biology and statistics. It is not a redirection. It is the route."
The program's methodological focus is on combining survey types that have historically been analyzed separately — visual survey, passive acoustic detection and photographic identification of individuals — each of which fails in a different way. Two regional assessment programs now use the joint estimation framework the group published in 2024.
Thesis work in the first cohort covered seal haul-out counts, acoustic detection of a low-density cetacean population, and the statistical treatment of surveys where the observer team changes between years.
Applications for fall entry close in January.
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