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A typical day

In field season you are on a boat at first light, running transects, hauling nets or gear, measuring and releasing animals, logging everything. Wet, cold, repetitive and genuinely good. The rest of the year is a desk: cleaning survey data, running population models, writing stock assessments and papers, and sitting in meetings where your numbers meet fishing quotas and someone's livelihood. Whale and aquarium work is a small slice of the field, not the middle of it.