Image

 ![Coastal research landscape used as the Northmoor University hero image.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/camilo-botia-k4vFDPJoDZk-unsplash.1600x1200.jpg.avif?itok=ujHvC8nC)

 

 



Image

 ![Coastal research landscape used as the Northmoor University hero image.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/camilo-botia-k4vFDPJoDZk-unsplash.1600x1200.jpg.avif?itok=ujHvC8nC)

 

 



Position title

Associate Professor of Biology

 

Person type

faculty

 

 

Email

m.obi@northmoor.edu

 

Marcus Obi's research is on environmental DNA — the genetic material an organism leaves behind in the water it passes through. Collect a liter of seawater, filter it, sequence what is on the filter, and you have a partial list of what was recently there. It is a technique with obvious appeal for a field that otherwise counts things by looking at them.

His work is mostly on the gap between that promise and what the method actually delivers. Detection depends on how much DNA an animal sheds, how fast it degrades, and how the water moved in between. A negative result is often a statement about currents rather than about fish. He has spent several years building reference sequences for local species so that the positives, at least, mean what they appear to mean.

Obi teaches MBIO 101 Introduction to Marine Biology, which puts him in front of nearly every first-year student in the department, and MBIO 410 Marine Molecular Ecology. He is unusually direct about the fact that the introductory course is the one he cares most about getting right.

He collaborates with the fisheries group on stock assessment applications and with Aisha Tanaka on using sequence data alongside the Prentice transects.



ORCID profile

[ORCID profile](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4127-8891)