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Life at Sea Means Leaving Stability Behind

Brea Evan's career reinvention finds her standing in tons of Pacific Ocean perch aboard a fishining boat. She's working as an observer aboard the Alaska Warrior.

Her job, among other things, is to monitor what kinds of fish are being caught and in what quantities. She files reports used by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

She is on a different planet from where she was three months ago, when she worked as a research assistant in a windowless lab at the University of Texas at Galveston. She was making about $28,000 dollars a year and life was stable, too stable.

She's thinking she'll sick with her new gig as an observer for at least one, maybe two years.

The money's good -- $130 per day -- even if the hours are horrendous. And then there's the downtime -- months at a stretch. Her first stop will likely be a warm beach.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Ketzel Levine
NPR Senior Correspondent Ketzel Levine reports for Morning Edition.