Professional Writing Portfolio

• August 5, 2026

Welcome to my professional e-portfolio and thank you for taking the time to consider me for a position in the Three Seas program. My name is Rain Gatrell and I am a third year Marine Biology student at Northeastern University. This portfolio exists to exhibit three works I have created in my studies that pertains to my interests within the field of Marine Biology. I aspire to conduct hands-on research on marine animals and their environments, so I thought it would be beneficial for me to expand my understanding of my area of interest and how my research may impact it. 
My interest in marine biology stems from my younger years; watching the Deadliest Catch with my father, or watching all the Shark Week specials every year. Because of these influences, I grew up with a good general understanding of marine life, with a heavy influence on sharks. It wasn’t until I switched my major to Marine Biology that I started to see how vastly minute my understanding was of the ocean and the life inside it. Furthermore, until my Advanced Writing in the Sciences course, I had not truly done a deep dive into my favorite marine subject- sharks. 
I had heard of systems of shark deterrents in the past, how magnets were used to keep sharks away, but I had never looked into it more than a passing glance. I saw, through my literature analysis’s, that my understanding, not much more than a layman reader, was greatly uniformed to the bigger issues at hand. Environmental conservation efforts, while beneficial to the fight against global warming, was having a negative impact on the local marine environment, specifically those organisms that sense electromagnetic waves. 
When writing these assignments, I was forced to challenge my own base-level understanding of marine life. Now with this new view of how these organisms operate, with senses that I could never comprehend from a personal standpoint, I also had to challenge my understanding of what “environmentally friendly” meant.