---
title: "Protected Species Observer"
description: "Watches for whales, dolphins and sea turtles from ships and platforms during offshore construction, seismic surveys and dredging, and orders work to…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/protected-species-observer"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Protected Species Observer

**Category:** Life, Physical, and Social Science · **SOC code:** 19-4021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 19-4021.00

Watches for whales, dolphins and sea turtles from ships and platforms during offshore construction, seismic surveys and dredging, and orders work to pause when animals come too close.

Also advertised as: PSO; Marine Mammal Observer; Protected Species Monitor; Passive Acoustic Monitoring Operator; Marine Wildlife Observer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $57,510 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $27.65/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $40,330 to $84,940, with the middle half between $48,130 and $71,520
- **Total US employment:** 69,620
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +7.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 9,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 38/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 69,620 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $40,330 |
| 25th | $48,130 |
| 50th (median) | $57,510 |
| 75th | $71,520 |
| 90th | $84,940 |
| Mean (average) | $61,380 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $71,440 | $64,523 | 9,210 |
| NJ | $66,040 | $60,696 | 1,290 |
| DC | $64,770 | $58,935 | 210 |
| CT | $62,360 | $60,187 | 650 |
| MA | $62,070 | $58,691 | 8,430 |
| NC | $61,720 | $65,433 | 2,460 |
| NY | $61,210 | $56,717 | 5,050 |
| WA | $60,800 | $56,816 | 3,210 |
| ME | $60,160 | $61,989 | 510 |
| CO | $59,400 | $57,641 | 1,990 |
| IN | $58,790 | $62,992 | 1,020 |
| DE | $58,550 | $58,663 | 180 |
| MS | $56,930 | $65,472 | 330 |
| AK | $56,470 | $55,169 | 410 |
| IL | $55,790 | $55,813 | 790 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/protected-species-observer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/protected-species-observer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 74,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 79,900 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 5,500 jobs, or +7.4%. Much faster than average: 7.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 9,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 62.8% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 14.5% |
| Some College Courses | 14.5% |
| Post-Doctoral Training | 5.6% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 2.5% |
| Doctoral Degree | 0.2% |

## What the work involves

- Scan for marine mammals and sea turtles during offshore operations
- Call for shutdowns or delays when animals enter exclusion zones
- Identify species and record sightings and behavior
- Operate passive acoustic monitoring equipment
- Brief vessel crews on mitigation requirements
- Compile monitoring data and compliance reports for regulators

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Quality Control Analysis — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Biology — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Chemistry — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 2.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Information Ordering — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.72 |
| C — Conventional | 5.62 |
| I — Investigative | 5.37 |
| S — Social | 1.97 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.31 |
| A — Artistic | 1.20 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 93.4 |
| ISTP | 79.5 |
| INTJ | 77.3 |
| ISFJ | 74.4 |
| ESTJ | 70.5 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Biological Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/biological-technician) — median $57,510
- [Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laboratory-technician) — median $62,930
- [Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laboratory-technologist) — median $62,930
- [Chemical Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chemical-technician) — median $60,390
- [Cytogenetic Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cytogenetic-technologist) — median $62,930
- [Histotechnologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/histotechnologist) — median $62,930
- [Agricultural Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-technician) — median $49,630
- [Histology Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/histology-technician) — median $62,930
- [Bioinformatics Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/bioinformatics-technician) — median $81,490
- [Nanotechnology Engineering Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nanotechnology-engineering-technologist-and-technician) — median $66,120

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/protected-species-observer