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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Prof Judith Gobin to get IWFTT’s

Inspirational Advocate Award

by

Fayola K J Fraser
317 days ago
20240825

The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum of T&T (IWFTT) has se­lect­ed four out­stand­ing, pi­o­neer­ing women in T&T to ho­n­our at its third an­nu­al In­spi­ra­tional Women Awards Gala in Sep­tem­ber 2024.

One of these women, Prof Ju­dith Gob­in, re­cent­ly re­tired head of the De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences and Pro­fes­sor Of Ma­rine Bi­ol­o­gy at the UWI St Au­gus­tine, has been qui­et­ly called by the mur­murs of the ocean for as long as she can re­mem­ber.

Se­lect­ed for the In­spi­ra­tional Ad­vo­cate Award, Gob­in, the first fe­male Pro­fes­sor of Life Sci­ences at the UWI and a ca­reer ma­rine bi­ol­o­gist will be recog­nised for her life­time of ser­vice to our world’s oceans.

Born on Garth Road, Williamsville in South, Gob­in was one of five chil­dren and re­mem­bers fond­ly “a fun child­hood, where we al­ways went to the beach and spent our long hol­i­day va­ca­tions in Ma­yaro.”

Al­though she re­mem­bers a cer­tain fas­ci­na­tion with the sea, she nev­er thought at that age she would end up as a ma­rine bi­ol­o­gist, and in­deed, dur­ing her child­hood years, there were few mod­els of women in that field for her to fol­low.

Gob­in went on to pur­sue her Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Zo­ol­o­gy/Botany and be­gan what would be a life-chang­ing in­tern­ship dur­ing her sec­ond year at UWI in 1981. She be­gan work­ing with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs full-time from 1982-1991 per­form­ing re­search on the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment to as­sess what life was present in our wa­ters.

“I so en­joyed it,” she re­mem­bers. “Go­ing to sea was my job! We were out sam­pling man­groves, sandy beach­es, rocky beach­es, do­ing ba­sic re­search to com­pile base­line in­for­ma­tion on what ex­ists in T&T.” This base­line da­ta re­mains the core com­po­nent of our data­base on ma­rine wildlife.

Ce­ment­ed in her pas­sion for ma­rine life and bio­di­ver­si­ty, Gob­in went to the UK in 1991 to pur­sue a PhD in Ma­rine Ecol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ex­eter. When she re­turned four years lat­er, Gob­in not on­ly came back to T&T wield­ing an­oth­er im­pres­sive de­gree but al­so with her first ba­by in tow. Along with her hus­band, God­frey Arau­jo, to whom she has now been mar­ried for 37 years, she em­barked on a jour­ney as a re­spect­ed pro­fes­sion­al in the field, as well as the jour­ney of moth­er­hood.

She re­turned to the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs in a se­nior su­per­vi­so­ry po­si­tion and re­mained there un­til her sec­ond son turned two. “Fam­i­ly comes first,” she says. “I de­cid­ed to take a break when he was two and work from home, do­ing con­sult­ing.”

This abil­i­ty to care­ful­ly weave a del­i­cate web of bal­ance be­tween her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives set the stage for Gob­in’s suc­cess through­out her lengthy and dec­o­rat­ed ca­reer.

In 1998, she be­gan work­ing at the UWI part-time and was en­gaged full-time in 2000. “I’ve spent a 40-year ca­reer im­mers­ing my­self in ma­rine re­search not on­ly in T&T and the Caribbean but glob­al­ly,” she says.

Gob­in has had in­cred­i­ble high­lights and land­mark achieve­ments through­out her years which have pro­pelled her to the fore­front of the field of ma­rine bi­ol­o­gy in the re­gion.

She re­called work­ing at sam­pling sta­tions as far as New Zealand and as re­mote as the Antarc­tic; join­ing a team of in­ter­na­tion­al sci­en­tists on a six-day deep sea ex­plo­ration of the seafloor in the Caribbean; and dis­cov­er­ing a species of pur­ple oc­to­pus in T&T wa­ters along with fel­low ma­rine bi­ol­o­gist Dr Di­va Amon dur­ing ex­plo­ration on the E/V Nau­tilus.

Dur­ing ex­plorato­ry mis­sions be­tween 2012-2014, a new species of deep-sea tube worm called the Lamel­liabrachia Judigob­i­ni was dis­cov­ered in Caribbean wa­ters by an in­ter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists and named af­ter Gob­in for her pi­o­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to ma­rine sci­ence.

Gob­in de­scribed not on­ly the nam­ing as a crown­ing achieve­ment in her ca­reer but al­so the lob­by­ing and even­tu­al repa­tri­a­tion in 2023 of the tube worm from the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Mu­se­um in Lon­don to its right­ful home at the UWI Zo­ol­o­gy Mu­se­um for our sci­en­tists to ben­e­fit from.

Gob­in be­came the first woman in T&T to hold the ti­tle of Pro­fes­sor in the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy at UWI St Au­gus­tine in May 2020, an­oth­er ma­jor achieve­ment in her ca­reer in STEM, a field sig­nif­i­cant­ly dom­i­nat­ed by men.

Ac­cord­ing to UN­ESCO da­ta in 2024, women make up on­ly 35 per cent of STEM grad­u­ates, a fig­ure that has been un­changed in ten years, with on­ly 28 per cent of fe­male re­searchers in STEM ac­count­ed for world­wide. Gob­in has shat­tered many glass ceil­ings for women in STEM in the coun­try and re­gion and has more than 55 pub­li­ca­tions in ma­rine ecol­o­gy and ma­rine bio­di­ver­si­ty.

She is the first sci­en­tist in T&T to have been ap­point­ed to the REV Ocean Sci­ence and In­no­va­tion Com­mit­tee and was al­so ap­point­ed to a glob­al ad­vi­so­ry board on deep ocean stew­ard­ship.

She, how­ev­er, does not bask in the well-de­served glo­ry of her achieve­ments but har­ness­es the in­flu­ence of her role as an ed­u­ca­tor to en­cour­age oth­er young women to pur­sue ca­reers in STEM.

“We are see­ing a pos­i­tive shift, in T&T we now have more women in the ma­rine sci­en­tif­ic field than men. I con­sid­er it a suc­cess in terms of be­ing able to in­spire and train young fe­male ma­rine re­searchers.”

Nav­i­gat­ing the space has not al­ways been easy for her, but it is her ded­i­ca­tion and ex­per­tise that have al­ways al­lowed her to gar­ner re­spect.

“On the ship, there’s no dis­tinc­tion be­tween man or woman, every­one is do­ing the same jobs and pulling their weight.”

As an ed­u­ca­tor, she men­tors many young women and en­cour­ages them to speak out and be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly in their ca­reers. “To men, you may seem ag­gres­sive, but I saw a meme this morn­ing that says the on­ly dif­fer­ence be­tween be­ing as­sertive and ag­gres­sive is gen­der,” she laughs.

She al­so en­cour­ages young women to not be afraid to pur­sue both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives, say­ing that bal­anc­ing part­ners, fam­i­ly and a ca­reer is pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly with the strong sup­port of your com­mu­ni­ty.

En­cour­ag­ing women to not run them­selves ragged in the pur­suit of “hav­ing it all,” she said that main­tain­ing pri­or­i­ties such as per­son­al health and well­ness and trust in a high­er be­ing will pave the path­way to bal­ance.

Prof Ju­dith Gob­in is a trail­blaz­er in every sense of the word. Her award by the IWFTT is in recog­ni­tion of a ca­reer de­vot­ed to ser­vice, to ex­plor­ing and pro­tect­ing the bio­di­ver­si­ty of our coun­try which is tru­ly at the core of hu­man sur­vival in a rapid­ly chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

Her work over a 40-year ca­reer as a woman in STEM, re­searcher, sci­en­tist, ex­plor­er, ed­u­ca­tor and moth­er has carved a new mod­el of who women can be­come in mod­ern so­ci­ety.

Thank you, Prof Gob­in for your life­long work and ser­vice to our seas. 


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