Growing up next to the Atlantic Ocean, Aliyah Griffith was endlessly fascinated by the mysteries of the deep. Then a chance encounter at SeaWorld sealed her future: Pressing a dolphin trainer on what her real title was introduced a young Griffith to the term marine biologist. Ever since, she knew that’s what she would be.
Griffith followed her love of the ocean to an internship with Paul Barber’s The Diversity Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, a summer research program for students from underrepresented groups. There she and a cohort of undergraduates earned full scuba certifications, then traveled to the coral reef paradise of Mo’orea in French Polynesia.
Today Griffith is completing a Ph.D. in marine biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studies degradation of reefs in Barbados and assesses how best to work with communities to manage coasts.
“Don’t allow anyone else to change the way you feel about the field or about exploring the ocean.”
As National Geographic Explorer, she worked with Disney to promote the live-action film The Little Mermaid. Prior to that experience, Griffith had founded a nonprofit called Mahogany Mermaids to show young people of color like herself that they too can explore the ocean. People have prejudices about where certain people should be and what they should be doing, Griffith said. To counter that, Mahogany Mermaids’ primary goal is to give kids exposure to aquatic sciences and let them know that “it’s an option for our communities,” she said.
Why mermaids? “They’re the international mascot of curious explorers,” she said.
Her advice for up-and-coming mermaids (and future ocean scientists) aligns with those words: “Don’t allow anyone else to change the way you feel about the field or about exploring the ocean.”
—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer
This profile is part of a special series in our August 2024 issue on science careers.
Citation: Scharping, N. (2024), Aliyah Griffith: Ocean scientist, explorer, mermaid, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240322. Published on 25 July 2024.
Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.
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