Lindsey W.
"The program has given me a strong scientific foundation while also helping me build toward the kind of hands-on experience I want for my career. You might start with zooplankton, but every shark career has to start somewhere."
Armed with a Marine Biology and Sustainable Aquaculture foundation from Unity, Lindsey is volunteering at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and working her way toward a career in shark conservation one tiny animal at a time.
Lindsey will be the first to tell you that working with tiny animals sounds simple. It isn’t.
As a volunteer on the Sustainability Team at the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Lindsey works with seahorse husbandry and live zooplankton cultures, a role that sounds straightforward until you understand everything it actually involves. Water changes. Routine seahorse care. Culturing, harvesting, and preparing live zooplankton as food. The kind of meticulous, detail-driven work where one small thing going wrong can affect everything downstream.
“I work with tiny animals,” she laughs. “It sounds simple until you realize how much goes into keeping those tiny animals alive and happy.”
What makes the work meaningful isn’t just the experience. It’s the understanding behind it. Lindsey came to Shedd equipped with a foundation from Unity’s Marine Biology and Sustainable Aquaculture program that let her grasp not just the steps, but the why behind each one.
“My coursework in aquatic systems, water quality, animal biology, and aquaculture helped me understand why these practices matter and how they affect animal health,” she says. “Being able to take that knowledge from the classroom and apply it to real animals has been one of the most valuable parts of my education.”
That understanding has paid off. Maintaining a healthy zooplankton culture has shown Lindsey firsthand how tightly nutrition, water quality, animal behavior, and husbandry are connected. These are lessons that no textbook can fully replicate. Her confidence with aquatic husbandry has grown in ways she couldn’t have anticipated when she started.
And she has her eye on something bigger. Lindsey came to Unity with a clear long-term goal: shark conservation. Every experience since has moved her a little closer to it.
“Seahorses may be a little smaller than the sharks I have my sights set on,” she says. “But they are teaching me plenty.”
To anyone considering Unity’s online Marine Biology and Sustainable Aquaculture program, her advice is direct: go for it, but be ready to get your hands wet. Literally.
