Interviews with Marine Scientists!

Stasia Ferbey

Biologist and "clam expert" at
Biologica Environmental Services Ltd

Describe your work/job?

I work for a consulting company called Biologica Environmental Services Ltd. We are contracted out by different companies to sort through marine and freshwater sediment samples and count and identify organisms to provide data for environmental research. My job is to identify mollusks that come from these sediment samples. I've been working there for just over a year now and this is my first job in the field of biology.

How did you get interested in marine biology?

As a child I was always interested in things found on the seashore (we lived across the street from the beach). I guess that sort of stuck with me. And then in high school I got really interested in biology because I had the coolest teacher, Mr. Atkinson. I never really was interested in human biology, just invertebrates and plants.

What training and education do you have? Where did you get it?

I just graduated from the University of Victoria with a bachelor of science in biology. I focused mainly on plant and invertebrate biology and attended a semester of school at the Bamfield Marine Station. Going to school at the Marine Station for me was certainly the most valuable part of my university education.

What specific skills do you use in your work?

Specific skills? Well… I guess you need to know how to use a microscope and how to read taxonomic keys (which can sometimes be challenging especially if you don’t know the terminology). I think the most valuable skill, if you can call it that, is patience. Most of the mollusks I see in a day are too tiny to be properly identified without a microscope. I could have hundreds of them… sometimes even a thousand of them in a sample. The smallest of them are so fragile that just flipping them with my tweezers can crush them badly enough that I can’t identify them. It can easily get overwhelming.

What is your work schedule (Days, hours per day, and overtime)?

I work Monday through Friday 9am to 5pm. It’s not the sort of thing that you can do for too long in a day. Your eyes go buggy and your brain gets foggy so its necessary to take little breaks.

What benefits do you get?

The neat thing about working at Biologica is that it is run out of the owner’s, Valerie Macdonald, house. She lives on a farm with goats and chickens and pigs and ducks and of course dogs. I don’t really get benefits per say but I do learn a lot about everything on the farm as well as my job which is wonderful for a city girl like me.

What do you like best about your work? What do you dislike?

The best part about my work is looking at an organism that I've never seen before or Val has never seen before and trying to identify it. Sometimes it takes hours, or even a few days going back to it over and over but when you figure out what the little thing is. Well, that's pretty exciting. Dislikes? I guess there’s not much to dislike. It would be nice to get in the field more often to collect samples. That's not to say that we’re always in the lab. We have taken a few field excursions this year. In August, a small crew, including myself, went to Coal Harbour (just west of Port Hardy) for an intertidal pollution survey. That was a wonderful experience for us. It was nice to get out into the sun.

Looking back is there anything that you would have done differently to get to where you are now?

I really didn't expect to be where I am so I don’t think I would change a thing. I have been pretty fortunate to end up where I am and I've enjoyed all of the battles along the way.

Is there anything about your job that you wish you could change?

I guess I would try to create some kind of diversity in the job. As I said before, it is not easy to sit and stare at things under a microscope for hours upon hours, and days upon days. The good thing about my situation is that I do get an opportunity to do other things such as enter data and check data. Biologica has also been put in charge of preparing a rather large collection of clams (Frank Bernard's collection) for display or keeping at the Royal British Columbia Museum. Since I am the latest "clam expert", I have been included in this project. It adds some variety and its kind of cool.

What high school or university courses would be helpful in preparing students for this job?

In high school biology, if I can recall correctly, there is some study of invertebrates. I believe we dissected an earthworm and a grasshopper. You really need a course that is going to make you familiar with local marine or freshwater invertebrates. I think that is focused on in university more so than high school. UVic has a few marine invertebrate classes that helped me learn some things but I learned most things as I went along at work.

Have you ever considered a career in a different field?

Oh yes. All the time. This is my first job out of university and I was very lucky to have found something in my field. I am still very young and I don’t think I have found my niche yet. In fact, I've often wondered how I would be as a high school science teacher.

What advice would you give to young students interested in marine biology careers?

Volunteer yourself. That's something that I never did. Volunteer for many things. This way you can get a feel for different things and you can see what you're good at and what you like or don’t like. And for goodness sake, take a course or two at the Bamfield Marine Station. The variety of courses they offer there will certainly give young scientists a taste of what to look forward to and for that matter what to look out for.

Do you think marine biology is important in society?

Yes! Yes! Yes! It is becoming increasingly important. Just look at the recent newspaper articles. From global warming, to commercial fishing, to pollution, to whale watching, you name it; the study of marine biology applies in some way, shape or form to all of these things. It is important that we as scientists study all aspects of marine biology so we can predict what might happen and perhaps try to reverse or at least decrease impacts we have made on our world.

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