Careers: Follow your dreams

Nick started off in marine science, took a detour via forestry, and now is back in marine science. Why does he think this has worked out well?

Transcript

Nick King (Cawthron Institute) I always was interested in marine science. When I was a kid I used to watch programmes like Jacques Cousteau on TV. I found that quite inspiring and always dreamt that was what I was going to do. When I went to university, I did marine science.

And then I guess at that time in the eighties there weren’t a lot of jobs in marine science in New Zealand. So I went off and spent ten years working in forestry and then eventually I thought, well, it’s time I got back into marine science and came to Cawthron.

What I really like is that now I’m using all of the marine science skills that I have. Also, everything that I learnt breeding trees applies to breeding shellfish. It’s surprising how similar shellfish are to plant and tree breeding in the way they reproduce the sorts of numbers that you are dealing with and the kind of statistics you use to analyse the data. But also having working in industry for ten years, you learn a lot about the sort of pitfalls of making the wrong decisions and keeping your priorities focussed and things like that. All of that stuff comes in really useful here.