60 American marine biologists

Frederick Allen Aldrich AB, M.Sc., Ph.D. was a prominent marine biologist and educator. He is best remembered for his research on giant squid.

Augusta Newton Foote Arnold was an American author and naturalist who published three books, two cookery books under the nom de plume Mary Ronald, and The Sea-Beach at Ebb-Tide, regarded as a seminal work on the intertidal biology of the United States.

C. Scott Baker is an American molecular biologist and cetacean specialist. He is Associate Director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. He is also Adjunct Professor of Molecular Ecology and Evolution at the University of Auckland, and Editor of the Journal of Heredity.

Charles William Beebe was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences.

Kelly Benoit-Bird is a marine scientist, associate professor at Oregon State University and now at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. She is a MacArthur Fellow.

Samuel Stillman Berry was an American marine zoologist specialized in cephalopods.

Martin David Burkenroad was an American marine biologist. He specialized in decapod crustaceans and fisheries science.

Esther Fussell Byrnes (1867–1946) was an American biologist and science teacher. She was one of the first women copepodologists—scientists who study copepods. She was a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, as well as the American Society of Naturalists.

Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Edwin Grant Conklin was an American biologist and zoologist.

Wesley Royce Elsberry is a data scientist with an interdisciplinary background in marine biology, zoology, computer science, and wildlife and fisheries sciences. He also became notably involved in the defense of evolutionary science against creationist rejection of evolution.

Harry Clifford Fassett (1870–1953) worked for the United States Fish Commission and later the United States Bureau of Fisheries. He became an expert on the salmon fisheries in Alaska and was also a map-maker and photographer.

Marie "Bobbie" Dennis Poland Fish was an American oceanographer and marine biologist best-known for her bioacoustics research. Her research on underwater sound detection allowed the United States Navy to distinguish enemy submarines from wildlife. The United States Navy awarded her its highest civilian award, the Distinguished Service Medal, in 1966 to recognize her contributions during her twenty-two years (1948-1970) leading the "Underwater Sound of Biological Origin" project for the Office of Naval Research. She also founded the Narragansett Marine Laboratory with her husband. It is now the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.

Austin Gallagher is an American marine biologist and social entrepreneur, best known for his research on sharks and his role as founder and CEO of Beneath the Waves, a non-profit organization focusing on ocean conservation. He is a National Geographic Explorer, has been the lead on more than 25 research and exploration expeditions, and his research has uncovered new species and behaviors, and has had an influence on policy for threatened species. He was a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in the science category. He is a current fellow of the Explorers Club and a Fulbright scholar and distinguished professor.

John Frederick Matthews ("Fred") Grassle was an American marine biologist, oceanographer, professor, and distinguished research scientist, notable for early work on the communities associated with deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and for his involvement in the creation of the Census of Marine Life and the first integration of marine biological data on a global scale, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System.

Mary Margaret Hagedorn is a US marine biologist specialised in physiology who has developed a conservation program for coral species, using the principles of cryobiology, the study of cellular systems under cold conditions, and cryopreservation, the freezing of sperm and embryos.

Pamela Hallock Muller is a scientist and Professor at the University of South Florida in the College of Marine Science. Her research has focused on reef-associated Foraminifera and algal symbiosis, extending into coral-reef ecology, paleobiology and carbonate sedimentology. She is a diversity and inclusion advocate that has championed gender equality for many decades.

John Emil Halver was an American biochemist known for his research into the nutritional biochemistry, physiology, cellular biochemistry of fish. His work on the nutritional needs of fish led to modern methods of fish farming and fish feed production around the world. He held a position with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as director of the Western Fish Nutrition Laboratory in Cook, Washington, where Halver and his staff carried out research on the nutrient requirements for Pacific salmon."

Stephen McDannell Hillenburg was an American animator and marine science educator. He is best remembered for creating the Nickelodeon animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants. Hillenburg served as the showrunner for the first three seasons of the show, which has become the fifth-longest-running American animated series.

Llewellya Williams Hillis, later Llewellya Hillis-Colinvaux, was a Canadian-born American marine biologist.

Erich Hoyt is a whale and dolphin (cetacean) researcher, conservationist, lecturer and author of 22 books and more than 600 reports, articles and papers. His book Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises, has been widely reviewed as the "definitive reference of the current extent of cetacean ecosystems-based management" and as "a unique and essential book for anybody interested in the conservation and protection of cetaceans. [This] definitive source on MPAs marine protected areas for cetaceans…will influence the design and management of this important and rapidly developing conservation tool." Choice listed the book as an "Outstanding Academic Title’ for the year 2012. Since 2013, as Research Fellow with Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) and IUCN SSC/WCPA Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force co-chair with Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, Hoyt has focussed on the creation and development of the new conservation tool of Important Marine Mammal Areas, or IMMAs. In 2016, following a MAVA Foundation pilot project to identify IMMAs in the Mediterranean, the Task Force's GOBI collaboration funded by the German Climate Initiative (IKI) began a six-year project to identify and implement IMMAs across most of the southern hemisphere. The IMMA tool has been received and widely endorsed by the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), various commissions within the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Whaling Commission, as well as national governments and scientists.

Alpheus Hyatt was an American zoologist and palaeontologist.

Jeremy Bradford Cook Jackson is an American ecologist, paleobiologist, and conservationist. He is an emeritus professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, senior scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, and visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. He studies threats and solutions to human impacts on the environment and the ecology and evolution of tropical seas. Jackson has more than 170 scientific publications and 11 books, with nearly 40,000 citations listed on Google Scholar.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, and conservation strategist. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York and holds a PhD in marine biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is the founder and president of Ocean Collectiv, a consulting firm that helps find ocean "conservation solutions grounded in social justice," and the founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for climate change and ocean conservation policy in coastal cities.

Myrtle Elizabeth Johnson was an American marine biologist, ascidiologist, and educator in California in the early 20th century. She was the first woman PhD faculty member at the San Diego State College and was chair of the Biology department for two decades. Her major work, Seashore Animals of the Pacific Coast, published in 1927, was the standard descriptive text of intertidal species until Ed Ricketts's Between Pacific Tides was published in 1939. Ricketts considered Johnson's book "the vade mecum of marine biologists of the Pacific. Indispensible."

Ernest Everett Just was a pioneering African-American biologist, academic and science writer. Just's primary legacy is his recognition of the fundamental role of the cell surface in the development of organisms. In his work within marine biology, cytology and parthenogenesis, he advocated the study of whole cells under normal conditions, rather than simply breaking them apart in a laboratory setting.

Nancy Knowlton is a coral reef biologist and is the Smithsonian Institution’s Sant Chair for Marine Science.

Charles Atwood Kofoid was an American zoologist known for his collection and classification of many new species of marine protozoans which established marine biology on a systematic basis.

Dr. Lionel Walford was a marine biologist and director of the Sandy Hook Marine Laboratory from 1960 to 1971. He advised several international fishery commissions and authored "Game Fishes of the Pacific Coast from Alaska to the Equator," "Living Resources of the Sea", and "Angler's Guide to the United States Atlantic Coast".

Harold Carl Otto Loesch was a marine biologist and oceanographer who is credited with being the first to examine the Mobile Bay jubilee in an academic journal (Ecology).paper

Jane Lubchenco is an American environmental scientist and marine ecologist who teaches and conducts research at Oregon State University. Her research interests include interactions between the environment and human well-being, biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable use of oceans and the planet. From 2009 to 2013, she served as Administrator of NOAA and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere.

Nancy Helen Marcus was an American biologist and oceanographer. During her graduate studies, Marcus became known as an expert on copepod ecology and evolutionary biology. She began her career as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studied copepod dormancy and its implications for marine aquaculture. She continued her field research as a professor of oceanography and later as the director of the Florida State University Marine Laboratory (FSU). During this time Marcus was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Women in Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served as the President of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. As the president, she led efforts in increase education activities and to increase the endowment fund.

James B. McClintock is an American professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and studies various aspects of marine biology in Antarctica. He is an authority on the effects of climate change in Antarctica which is detailed in his book Lost Antarctica – Adventures in a Disappearing Land,.

Mary Alice McWhinnie was an American biologist, professor at DePaul University and an authority on krill from Chicago, Illinois She was the first woman to sail for two months in Antarctic waters aboard the NSF's research vessel, USNS Eltanin. The National Science Foundation eventually allowed her to winter over at McMurdo Station and in 1974, she became the first American woman to serve as chief scientist at an Antarctic research station.

Jessica Ulrika Meir is an American-born NASA astronaut, marine biologist, and physiologist. She was previously Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, following postdoctoral research in comparative physiology at the University of British Columbia. She has studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica, and the physiology of bar-headed geese, which are able to migrate over the Himalayas. In September 2002, Meir served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 4 crew. In 2013 she was selected by NASA to Astronaut Group 21. Meir launched on September 25, 2019, to the ISS onboard Soyuz MS-15, where she served as a flight Engineer during Expedition 61 and 62. On October 18, 2019, Meir and Christina Koch were the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk. The Soyuz capsule carrying Jessica Meir and fellow astronauts Andrew Morgan and Oleg Skripochka touched down on Friday April 17, 2020 near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 11.16am local time.

Ida May Mellen (1877–1970) was an American ichthyologist and biologist. She worked at the New York Aquarium from 1916 to 1929.

Nettie Lorene Murray MacGinitie was an American marine biologist and malacologist. She worked for a while as a director of the Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory between 1957 and 1959. She also wrote books and helped in producing films on marine life.

Kenneth Stafford Norris or Kenneth S. Norris was a renowned marine mammal biologist, conservationist, and naturalist.

Karen Joyce Osborn is a marine scientist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Invertebrate Zoology department. She is known for her work in marine biology specializing in mid-water invertebrates.

Joseph Richard Pawlik is a marine biologist. He is the Frank Hawkins Kenan Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is best known for studies of sponges on Caribbean coral reefs that reveal ecological principles such as resource trade-offs, trophic cascades and indirect effects.

Ronald Carl Phillips (1932–2005) was an American marine botanist and educator in the United States, Netherlands and Ukraine. He specialized in seagrass biology, ecology, systematics, distribution and transplantation. Prof. Phillips was the first individual to combine scuba-diving with seagrass research and transplantation. He co-edited or co-authored four scientific books, 20 book chapters, 20 technical reports and 3 monographs, over 70 reviewed papers, plus his autobiography which included the development of seagrass biology and restorative seagrass transplantation as important parts of the environmental sciences.

Richard Rathbun was an American biologist and administrator at the Smithsonian Institution.

Dixy Lee Ray was an American scientist and politician who served as the 17th Governor of the U.S. state of Washington. Variously described as idiosyncratic, and "ridiculously smart," she was the state's first female governor and was in office during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. She was a supporter of atomic energy.

Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts commonly known as Ed Ricketts, was an American marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher. He is best known for Between Pacific Tides (1939), a pioneering study of intertidal ecology. He is also known as a mentor that influenced the writer John Steinbeck, which resulted in a collaboration and coauthorship of the book, Sea of Cortez (1941). Eleven years later, and just 3 years after the death of Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck reprinted the narrative portion of their coauthored book with a new publisher, but removed Ed as coauthor, while adding a biography of Ed Ricketts, and Steinbeck made a new title for the book as The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951).

Kimberly B. Ritchie is an American marine biologist. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Sciences at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Her research is focused on marine microbiology and how microbes affect animal health in hosts such as corals and sharks.

Ira Rubinoff is an American marine biologist and was a former director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Anne Rudloe was an American marine biologist. She was the co-founder of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Panacea, Florida.

Milner Baily ("Benny") Schaefer, is notable for his work on the population dynamics of fisheries.

Oscar Elton Sette, who preferred to be called Elton Sette, was an influential 20th-century American fisheries scientist. During a five-decade career with the United States Bureau of Fisheries, United States Fish and Wildlife Service and its Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, Sette pioneered the integration of fisheries science with the sciences of oceanography and meteorology to develop a complete understanding of the physical and biological characteristics of the ocean environment and the effects of those characteristics on fisheries and fluctuations in the abundance of fish. He is recognized both in the United States and internationally for many significant contributions he made to marine fisheries research and for his leadership in the maturation of fisheries science to encompass fisheries oceanography, defined as the "appraisal or exploitation of any kind of [marine] organism useful to Man" and "the study of oceanic processes affecting the abundance and availability of commercial fishes." Many fisheries scientists consider him to be the "father of modern fisheries science."

Bell M. Shimada was an American fisheries scientist. He is noted for his study during the 1950s of tuna stocks in the tropical Pacific Ocean and its important effect on the development of the post-World War II tuna fishery on the United States West Coast.

Anitra Thorhaug is an American marine biologist, plant ecophysiologist and a chemical oceanographer whose extensive work on the rehabilitation of coastal ecosystems has had a substantial influence on national and international policies on conservation around the world. She is President of the Greater Caribbean Energy and Environment Foundation, and President of the Institute for Seagrasses. She has had a series of professorships at leading Universities and presently works at The Institute of Sustainable Forestry Ecophysiological Laboratories at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She is a member of the International Club of Rome and has twice been President of the US Association of the Club of Rome.

Tierney Thys is an American marine biologist, science educator, and National Geographic explorer. In 1988 she earned a degree in biology from Brown University, and in 1998 she earned a doctorate in biomechanics. She was formerly the director of research at the Sea Studios Foundation. She was also the science editor for The Shape of Life and director for Strange Days on Planet Earth. She has also written, narrated and produced short films. Since 2000 she and her colleagues have been studying the giant ocean sunfish (mola). In 2004 she was named a National Geographic "Emerging Explorer". She has since joined National Geographic expeditions and developed a National Geographic children's television conservation series.

Richard William Timm was a catholic priest, educator, zoologist, and development worker. He was the Superior of the Congregation of Holy Cross in Dhaka and a member of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Province. He was also one of the founders of Notre Dame College in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He was the 6th principal of Notre Dame College.

Reginald Van Trump Truitt was an American zoologist, Army officer, and college lacrosse player and coach. He spent his professional career studying the oyster habitat in the Chesapeake Bay. Truitt founded the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at what is now the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. He also served as the first head lacrosse coach at his alma mater, the University of Maryland from 1919 to 1927. Truitt was inducted into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1959.

Ruth Dixon Turner was a pioneering U.S. marine biologist and malacologist. She was the world's expert on Teredinidae or shipworms, a taxonomic family of wood-boring bivalve mollusks which severely damage wooden marine installations.

Dana E. Wallace was the assistant director of research of the Maine Department of Marine Resources from 1946 to 1983. He co-chaired the Biological Advisory Committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. His work focused primarily on the aquaculture of mollusks, particularly clams and oysters, in the coastal regions of Maine.

Daniell "Danni" Washington is an American activist, artist and presenter who campaigns for cleaner, plastic-free oceans. She founded the Not-for-Profit Big Blue & You. Washington presents the STEM-themed TV show Xploration Nature Knows Best, Mission Unstoppable, and web series Science the $#!* out of it.

Judith Shulman Weis is an American marine biologist. Her research and writing focuses on estuarine ecology and ecotoxicology, including the responses of salt marsh organisms, populations and communities to stresses, particularly heavy metal contaminants, invasive species and parasites. She is also working to reduce the spread of microplastics in the environment.

Edith Anne "Edie" Widder Smith is an American oceanographer, marine biologist, and the Co-founder, CEO and Senior Scientist at the Ocean Research & Conservation Association.

Susan Lynn Williams was an American marine biologist and Distinguished Professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where she directed the Bodega Marine Laboratory from 2000-2010. She researched marine coastal ecosystems and how they are affected by human activities. She was a strong advocate for environmental protection, credited with helping pass legislation expanding the boundaries of Northern California's Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank national sanctuaries, increasing the area of federally-protected coastal waters.