Try to be in touch with, you know, with a system that you really want to study,
with a system that really drives
you crazy -- because that's how you nurture passion
and passion is one of the most
important things in becoming a researcher.
My name is Moises. I am a fish biologist, also known as an Ichthyologist.
I'm a Ph.D. student for the
University of Texas at Austin, although
I'm conducting my research from the
California Academy of Sciences here in
San Francisco.  How I got into this field
is actually a very interesting story --
I'm originally from Panama.  I actually moved
here to the US to do my Ph.D. and all my
experience before that was in Panama
which is a tropical country.  And when I
was a kid, I would do a lot of snorkeling
and I would always be very, very
intrigued by all the colors of the
fishes and also all the creatures that
were in that complex environment that
is coral reef systems.
One of the things that I did when I was
in high school, that changed my
perspective of life in general, was
getting scuba certified.  It really, really
cemented my interest in marine biology
and it really cemented my interest in
actually becoming a biologist.  At the age
of 16 I started diving quite a bit and
when I started diving,  I got really, really obsesed with marine biology.
When you talk about ichthyology you can do
multiple things. In this case it
encompasses a broad spectrum of study. So
there's a lot of people that are related
with systematics and try to determine
how each fish relates with each other.
The kind of study that I do on fishes -- is
that I try to study their genome, to try
to understand their evolutionary history,
in order to try to understand why and
how there's such high fish
diversity in certain portions of the world.
One of the biggest challenges for
me becoming a researcher is that my
first language is Spanish.
It was really, really challenging at first, you know,
trying to write in English the whole
time -- try to communicate in English the whole time --
trying to receive classes in
English whole time. And it took me
probably about a year until I was really
comfortable and it was not an exhaustive
process -- like I would be literally
exhausted by the end of the day.
There's many tasks that you have to do at a
given time.  A lot of people don't think
that they have to write really well, but
when you're a scientists, you're gonna spend a
lot of time writing. So, pay attention to
your writing classes -- your literature classes.
You also have to do, you know, the
genetic analysis.  You're gonna have to
analyze the data in the lab with the
computers, you're gonna have to do a lot of
statistical analysis to try to infer
what's going on with that genetic data and
you're gonna have to write those results
in a really good fashion for your peers to understand it.
Another part
that's really, really exciting about
being a fish biologist, is that you get
to go to the field to collect
samples, and that's probably the
preferred part of a lot of biologists.
The thing that I probably love the most
about this is that when you go to the
field and you observe something, you can
start asking all these questions about
that particular observation. And then you
have to come up with ways to try to
answer that particular question.
And in the end, that answer might become
part of the general human knowledge, even
if it's like a really tiny smidge of
knowledge,  it actually is incriminating
the knowledge you're giving to mankind. And that's a
satisfaction and gratification that you
feel that no one can take out of you.
