Most people go to Barbados for vacation. Suzanne Dorsey goes there to work. With a job many people would envy, Dorsey not only gets to delight in the island’s beauty and hospitable climate for ten weeks each summer, she also gets to snorkel and scuba dive in the warm turquoise waters. It’s a dream job by any stretch of the imagination, and not surprising that she loves what she does.
After graduating with a major in biology from Drew University, Dorsey went on to get a master’s degree at the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in coastal oceanography. Today, as a marine biologist, she’s able to combine her interest in biology and ecology with her love of the ocean in two separate vocational pursuits.
During the academic year, Dorsey teaches zoology and ecology, among other courses, at Salem College, a small women’s school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In the summer, she heads to the West Indies to lead expeditions for Earthwatch, the international non-profit organization that sponsors field research projects in 50 countries around the world. For Dorsey, studying marine life in tropical waters was a career move that happened by choice, not chance.
“As part of my master’s research, I studied anchovies in the Chesapeake Bay,” Dorsey recalls. “I remember being on a 48-hour research cruise in February and it was really rough, with six to twelve foot swells. That was when I decided it would be just as rewarding to study warm water fish. I became interested in tropical reef ecology and went to Barbados for two years as part of the research for my Ph.D.”
A colleague in Barbados who eventually went to work at Earthwatch encouraged Dorsey to apply for a summer grant from the organization. Her proposal was quickly accepted, and that summer she began leading dive expeditions among the brilliant coral reefs of the Caribbean to study the bicolored damselfish.
"The damselfish is unique," she explains, "because it spawns on the sea bottom and is aggressively territorial. The fish are good research subjects because they stay within five to six square feet of the nest at all times."
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