Case Study
Marine Biology
The foundational degree in marine life, and the route into most of the graduate work that follows it. Field work starts in the first year.
Marine Biology is the largest program at Northmoor and the one most people mean when they write to ask about studying the ocean. It is a full biology degree taught in a marine setting: cells, genetics, evolution and ecology, with the organisms and the water they live in supplying the examples throughout.
You will be in the field in your first year. Students in this program spend nights at Prentice Coastal Field Station from the first spring, walking transects that have been surveyed continuously since 2004, and the courses that involve the most cold water fill first every year.
What you study
The first two years build the core: introductory marine biology, general oceanography, environmental science foundations, and invertebrate zoology. The third and fourth years open out into fish biology, marine botany, reef ecology and molecular ecology, with room for courses from the aquaculture and policy programs.
The molecular strand is worth flagging because it is where the field is moving. Environmental DNA lets a liter of seawater stand in for a survey, and learning both what that delivers and where it quietly fails is a genuinely marketable thing to be able to do.
Where it leads
Graduates go into environmental consulting, state and federal agency science, aquaculture, education, and graduate study. The last is the largest single destination, and it is worth being direct about why.
Several specializations at Northmoor are graduate programs, not undergraduate ones. Marine mammal science is the clearest case. If that is what you want to do, this degree is the route: it gives you the population biology and statistics that the master's program assumes you already have. Students who arrive wanting marine mammals and leave four years later doing exactly that are a normal outcome, not a redirection.
What to expect
Cold water and early starts. Tide work does not respect a timetable, and a good deal of the field schedule is set by the moon rather than by the registrar. Students who come to visit in February tend to know what they are signing up for.
Curriculum
MBIO 101
Introduction to Marine Biology
The first-year foundation in marine life: cells, inheritance, evolution and the diversity of organisms, with the local shoreline as the standing example.
1
OCEA 110
Introduction to Oceanography
The ocean as a physical, chemical, geological and biological system. Taken by students across every program here.
1
ENVS 140
Environmental Science Foundations
The systems view: energy, matter, populations and the human pressures acting on all three, with coastal examples throughout.
1
MBIO 210
Invertebrate Zoology
The major invertebrate groups, their body plans and their ecology, taught largely through specimens collected on the shore.
1
MBIO 240
Marine Botany and Algae
Marine plants and algae, from microscopic phytoplankton to seagrass meadows, and the habitats they build.
1
MBIO 320
Fish Biology
The biology of fishes, from physiology and life history to the population processes that fisheries management depends on.
1
MBIO 350
Coral Reef Ecology
Reef ecosystems, the symbiosis that builds them, and what the last three decades of disturbance have shown about recovery.
1
MBIO 410
Marine Molecular Ecology
Molecular methods in marine ecology, including environmental DNA, and an unusually careful account of what those methods do not deliver.
1.5Common questions
Yes, for all students entering directly from high school. Transfer students are housed as space allows, and the waitlist usually clears by mid-July.
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At a glance
- Credential awarded
- BS
- Degree level
- undergraduate
- Program length
- 4 years
- Start terms
- fall
Program Lead
Dr. Aisha Tanaka
Professor of Marine Ecology
Dr. Marcus Obi
Associate Professor of Biology
