motivation

When I interned at the Florida Aquarium, the guy I worked with told me about Coral List. It's basically a message board for all things coral reef related. He told me to sign up because they often post jobs and research opportunities on there. When I finally got my degree last May, I searched and applied for jobs aimlessly. Anything I saw that was even remotely interesting, I applied...well, we all know how that turned out. Sometimes this Coral List can be annoying though. Basically every time someone posts something to the board and it gets approved by the administrator, I get an email in my inbox. So some days, I get like 12 emails and it's not always about cool stuff. Maybe once a week, a job post comes through...and they're typically looking for people with much higher qualifications than I have under my belt...but I still look at them and hope that one day, I'll get there. Occasionally, a post like this one below comes along though, and it reminds me why I love what I love. It also motivates me to go out and get that job! So many cool things about this post! So my afternoon will be spent researching this guy's job and trying to find out how I can get where he is. :)


"An interesting and very fun thing occurred the other day when I was comparing a bony fish to a shark using a lionfish and a dogfish for a group of six through twelve year old ocean explorers attending Reef Relief's Coral Camp for Kids.  We decided to open the stomach of the lionfish and to the kids astonishment and to my surprise we found a fully formed juvenile lionfish in the adults stomach.  Now, I know that lionfish do cannabalize younger individuals but the kids were really amazed and it led into an entire discussion on cannabalism in marine fishes.  The kids recieved a great education out of the stomach of a lionfish, what could be better and of course we then got to talk about invasives.  This is how to get kids interested in marine science at an early age-- that is have some fun while at the same time learning something about marine ecology!  Perhaps the lionfish will keep their populations somewhat controlled by the practice of cannibalism.  I know that would be great, but probably not very likely when we consider their fecundity."