A marine scientist is a person who deals with scientific aspects of the sea: he or she makes observations in the sea (that means collects data) and tries to find answers (that means explanations) to questions arising from observations, or to discover new facts about the ocean, or to find patterns in the data which help to formulate answers to the questions. Depending on their field of interest, marine scientists may be called oceanographers, marine biologists (biological oceanographer) or marine geologists.