This is a graduate program. It is the specialization more prospective students write to us about than any other, and a large share of those letters come from people still in high school. If that is you, the honest answer is that the route in is the BS in Marine Biology, and that four years later you would be a strong applicant here. Several of our current students arrived exactly that way.
The degree is a research master's in marine mammal population assessment: the science of estimating how many animals there are, where they are, and how those numbers are changing, from data that are sparse, biased and expensive to collect.
Why it is graduate level
Because the interesting problems are statistical, and the statistics assume a foundation. A population estimate for a whale or a seal is built from sightings shaped by weather, observer, platform and luck. Turning that into a number with a defensible confidence interval requires population biology and quantitative methods that a four-year degree is where you acquire.
A program that admitted students without that foundation would spend its two years teaching the undergraduate degree again.
What you study
Marine mammal biology, population dynamics, and data analysis for ocean science, alongside a research thesis that occupies most of the second year. The methodological focus is on integrating data types that were historically analyzed separately — visual survey, passive acoustics and photographic identification of individuals — each of which has a different blind spot.
Field work
Survey work is seasonal and weather-dependent. Students should expect time at sea and at Prentice, and should also expect that a planned survey week will sometimes produce no data at all. Learning to design around that is part of the training.
Where it leads
Agency stock assessment, consulting for offshore development, conservation organizations, and doctoral study. Graduates of the first cohort are working in all four.