When a marine worker died from breathing toxic air, marine chemist Clive
MacGregor investigated the accident. He says that if the company had hired
a marine chemist to ensure the safety of the ship's environment, this man
would still be alive.
"They hadn't checked the tank," remembers MacGregor. "If they had, then
I'm 100 percent sure that we would have discovered the fact there was a danger."
MacGregor monitors the conditions of marine tank atmospheres. He works
in a limited and extremely specialized field within marine chemistry. Where
MacGregor works, a chemist is somebody who inspects the hazards in marine
tanks.
What is a marine tank, you ask?
"It's a tank on a ship. It could hold the ship's fuel. It could be a ballast
tank. It could also be a cargo tank or any other sort of space that may have
engines or machinery in it," MacGregor explains.
There is a certain amount of heroism in his work. Since a marine chemist
who does ship-related work has the ability to prevent serious accidents, they
enjoy lots of respect, says MacGregor. "You're doing a safety function, making
sure a tank is safe. So, people are generally quite positive."
On the downside, ships come in and out of port every day, at all times
of the day. Captains put pressure on marine chemists to check their tanks
-- on the double! For MacGregor, this means working some pretty odd hours.
"I don't like it when it gets too busy. You're trying to [assess] one ship
and there's another ship waiting. Or you've got to drive in the middle of
the night to go somewhere at a long distance. It's not 9 to 5 by any means,"
says MacGregor.
In all honesty, says MacGregor, a young person will have a hard time entering
this field straight out of university. MacGregor's educational background
is in chemistry, but his most valuable asset is practical experience. Where
he works, experience counts for a lot.
"I would recommend it to somebody that's worked three to five years and
wants to do something different," he says. The average age of a marine chemist
in the shipping industry is 50, says MacGregor. He explains that an old ship's
captain might have a hard time taking orders from, or having faith in, a fresh
young college graduate.
Like MacGregor, Mary Scranton received an undergraduate degree in chemistry.
As a marine chemist, however, her primary focus is on the ocean itself, rather
than ocean vessels. Through chemistry, she looks at "how the ocean functions,
why the biology is where it is, how the ocean might be involved with global
climate change."
Currently, Scranton is working on what is basically a huge natural beaker.
The beaker is actually a crack in the continental shelf off the coast of Venezuela.
And it's not a crack to be messed with! It's about 60 miles long and 30 kilometers
wide.
"It's this huge basin that has no oxygen in it and we're looking at how
the chemistry and the biology interact to form the layers of organisms that
live under very specific conditions," says Scranton.
Scranton says that marine chemistry allows her to use a basic
science to understand the world at large. She always liked chemistry, but
had no desire to spend time in a lab.
"I'm not a person who loves little animals. To me, math and physics and
chemistry made the most sense in high school. When I got to college and I
was a chemistry major, I knew that I liked chemistry. But I did not want to
spend my life sitting in a lab....To me, the advantage of working in a field
like oceanography is that it's a very concrete way of applying [chemistry]
to the world."
Scranton says that in any science field, you need to use your skills in
an environment that interests you. For her, the science is chemistry and the
environment is marine.
"I like being able to travel. I like having this knowledge about how the
world functions. To me, it's being able to go out and look at the ocean and
say, 'It's not just a picture. There's something going on there that I understand.'
I find [that] very empowering," says Scranton.