If you're contemplating a career in science, now wouldn't be an awful time to jump into marine research.

It's an awful time if you actually want a job though. Such an overcrowded field at the moment unless you want to do marine chemistry or marine engineering. My university has arguably the best marine science program on the east coast of the US and just the output of people graduating from here shows that a lot of the marine science fields are crowded.

That being said, getting hired as a professor allows stable pay while conducting research (and helps get grants from the government). So there's always that route.

In international waters? There's very little we can do to prevent ships from deepwater trawling, overfishing, or dumping waste.

We'd have to have an international (with basically every country, or at least country surrounded by international waters) organization that regulates that. A huge problem as this will never happen.

Lionfish is one of the ecologically friendliest dishes you can eat right now. Likewise, eating more squid and jellyfish, which are both doing fine right now, helps relieve massive amounts of pressure on other fisheries.

Lionfish and squid are both delicious... Jellyfish can be when prepared absolutely perfect. I hope sea turtles take advantage of the jellyfish population rising though.

take ocean-related ecotourism trips

This is one of the best ways to help the local communities with their clean up/conservation/etc. There's quite a few in SC, NC, and FL if anyone wants to visit there... Costa Rica has a huge ecotourism community. Plenty of ecotours one can take.

Write your legislators, sign petitions, the works. You know the drill- you hear about an ocean-related environmental problem, make some noise, demand your government do something about it.

Glad you brought this up. The White House thinks it is a good idea to allow drilling in the Atlantic again.... So I'm plugging these links, shamelessly. S.O.D.A. and S.O.D.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. Great post and I promise I'll stop replying like this one day.