Fisheries

Types of Degrees Fisheries Majors Are Getting

The following table lists how many fisheries sciences graduations there were for each degree level during the last year for which data was available.

Education Level	Number of Grads
Bachelor’s Degree	342
Master’s Degree	42
Associate Degree	41
Basic Certificate	34
Graduate Certificate	31
Doctor’s Degree	13
Undergraduate Certificate	2

What Fisheries Majors Need to Know

In an O*NET survey, fisheries majors were asked to rate what knowledge areas, skills, and abilities were important in their occupations. These answers were weighted on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most important.

Knowledge Areas for Fisheries Majors

This major prepares you for careers in which these knowledge areas are important:

• Public Safety and Security - Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
• Biology - Knowledge of plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
• Law and Government - Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.

Skills for Fisheries Majors

fisheries majors are found most commonly in careers in which the following skills are important:

• Critical Thinking - Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
• Active Listening - Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
• Speaking - Talking to others to convey information effectively.
• Judgment and Decision Making - Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
• Monitoring - Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.

Abilities for Fisheries Majors

As a fisheries major, you will find yourself needing the following abilities:

• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.

What Can You Do With a Fisheries Major?

People with a fisheries degree often go into the following careers:

Job Title	Job Growth Rate	Median Salary
First-Line Supervisors of Aquacultural Workers	2.1%	$46,960
Fish and Game Wardens	4.3%	$57,710

Who Is Getting a Bachelor’s Degree in Fisheries?

This is a less frequently chosen undergraduate major. Only 298 students graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fisheries sciences in 2021, making it rank #237 in popularity. Roughly 45% of the graduates are women, and 55% are men.

Racial-Ethnic Diversity

At the countrywide level, the racial-ethnic distribution of fisheries majors is as follows:

Race/Ethnicity	Number of Grads
Asian	3
Black or African American	4
Hispanic or Latino	28
White	273
International Students	2
Other Races/Ethnicities	32

Geographic Diversity

Americans aren’t the only ones with an interest in Fisheries. About 0.6% of those with this major are international students.

Amount of Education Required for Careers Related to Fisheries

Some degrees associated with fisheries may require an advanced degree, while others may not even require a bachelor’s in the field. In general, the more advanced your degree the more career options will open up to you. However, there is significant time and money that needs to be invested into your education so weigh the pros and cons.

Find out what the typical degree level is for fisheries careers below.

Education Level	Percentage of Workers
Less than a High School Diploma	20.4%
High School Diploma - or the equivalent (for example, GED)	21.2%
Post-Secondary Certificate - awarded for training completed after high school (for example, in agriculture or natural resources, computer services, personal or culinary services, engineering technologies, healthcare, construction trades, mechanic and repair technologies, or precision production)	3.7%
Some College Courses	2.9%
Associate’s Degree (or other 2-year degree)	2.3%
Bachelor’s Degree	44.5%
Post-Baccalaureate Certificate - awarded for completion of an organized program of study; designed for people who have completed a Baccalaureate degree but do not meet the requirements of academic degrees carrying the title of Master.	3.2%
Master’s Degree	1.5%

Online Fisheries Programs

The following table lists the number of programs by degree level, along with how many schools offered online courses in the field.

Degree Level	Colleges Offering Programs	Colleges Offering Online Classes
Certificate (Less Than 1 Year)	0	0
Certificate (1-2 years)	2	1
Certificate (2-4 Years)	0	0
Associate’s Degree	5	1
Bachelor’s Degree	3	1
Post-Baccalaureate	0	0
Master’s Degree	10	1
Post-Master’s	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Research)	6	0
Doctor’s Degree (Professional Practice)	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Other)	0	0

Majors Related to Fisheries

You may also be interested in one of the following majors related to fisheries.

Major	Number of Grads
Natural Resources Conservation	23,672
Natural Resource Management	3,147
Wildlife Management	2,389
Forestry	2,243
Natural Resources Conservation (Other)	150

References

*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

• College Factual
• College Scorecard
• National Center for Education Statistics
• O*NET Online
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers First Quarter 2020
• Image Credit: By Ootahara under License

More about our data sources and methodologies.