A co-op with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has third-year Northeastern University student Haley Benjamin observing right whales off the coast of Massachusetts, counting penguins in Antarctica via drone and getting closer to her goal of becoming a marine biologist.

“I’ve just always known that I need to work with animals,” says Benjamin, who is working at WHOI’s Marine Mammal Remote Sensing (MARS) Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

The diverse range of marine animals and opportunities for doing research on them inspired her to major in marine biology at Northeastern.

“I feel marine animals are so underappreciated compared to land animals,” says Benjamin, who is from Taunton, Massachusetts. “There are so many unknowns in this field that there is a lot of room for questions to be answered.”

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Photo courtesy of Haley Benjamin