Question: What sort of things do you do when you are a marine biologist?? :)

Cees Van der Land answered on 26 Jun 2012:

Thanks Blanka, I would call myself a marine geologist, but I have been on research cruises with enough marine biologists to know what they are doing!

2 examples:
On a research ship a marine biologist collected samples from big bivalves which were living at the bottom of the deep sea (below 300 meters). Almost no sunlight reaches there. We had to lower camera’s (with big lights) and a boxcore (a cylinder which is pushed into the sea bottom to collect undisturbed samples) to bring them up. She (the marine biologist) then cut off a small bit from the soft bit to analyse to found out what they were eating. It turned out that the bivalves were not feeding from particles falling from above (which is what normally happens) but that they lived on nutrients coming from seeps (leakage) from the sea bottom.
A friend of mine who is still studying to become a marine biologist worked as a animal keeper in Seaworld Orlando. She is now studying to learn more about whales, how they communicate.

So, like Blanka said, a bit of fieldwork and a lot of labwork!