Re: Fish and education

["Sean Murphy" <seancmurphy@hotmail.com>]

Hi Tarah,

As a fisheries professional I have some advise about pursuing studies 
of tropical fish.  Funding for these kinds of pursuits is few and far 
between.  You really have to be ready to pay your dues to study the 
kind of fish we love on this list.  The PhD offers I had for tropical 
fish group studies that required collecting were fairly pitiful 
funding wise.  You might be in luck as a molecular geneticist in that 
you can borrow specimens from collections for some of your work.  
However, you run the risk of not being taken seriously by the 
organismal side of biology if you only work with museum stock.  

You noted that many people on the list have mentioned that some 
question sounded like a possible grad student project.  I would bet 
these people are either Professors that know how to work grad students 
to death or people that have never done a grad project.  Many of the 
suggestions I have seen are too broad for a single student to 
complete.  Pick your projects carefully, and try to find more than one 
experiment to try, running three at the same time is what saved my 
Masters thesis.  

If you are going to do a study of a tropical topic I recommend turning 
a deaf ear to the neysayers, putting your goals firmly infront of you 
and dedicating 3 to 5 years of solid effort to finish them.  

Good luck

Sean Murphy 
Fisheries Biologist 
There is a fine line between fishing and standing on the bank looking 
like an idiot. 


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