- Marine scientist Mckenzie Margarethe spent two years working on a touring submarine in Hawaii.
- She spoke to Insider about what the job entailed, including working 10-hour shifts.
For some, the thought of being confined to what is essentially a metal box beneath the surface of the ocean sounds like a nightmare.
It's a fear that likely has increased in recent weeks after five people died onboard the Titan submersible, which imploded during a visit to the Titanic wreckage on June 18.
But for Mckenzie Margarethe, a 31-year-old marine scientist, working on submarines and submersibles has always been nothing less than a dream. Margarethe — who currently lives in Canada — told Insider she spent two years working full-time as a copilot and naturalist on Atlantis Adventures submarines on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she grew up.
Here are three of the best things about the job, and two of the worst, in Margarethe's experience.
For Margarethe, helping people connect with the ocean was rewarding
Margarethe regularly shares her knowledge of marine sciences on TikTok and Instagram, where she has over 368,700 and 6,500 followers, respectively.
But there's nothing quite like teaching someone about the ocean in person, she said.
From 2018 to 2019, Margarethe shared her knowledge with people who boarded the Atlantis tour submarine — which carries up to 48 passengers — about the waters surrounding Hawaii and their sea creatures.
@mckensea Replying to @Chelsey and these touring submarines are FAR safer, every crew member aboard is trained vigorously and you don’t have to pay a quarter of a million dollars to go on board #titansubmarine #submariner #womeninstem ♬ original sound - Mckenzie Margarethe
At its core, the job was about "introducing people to the ocean and getting them excited about the ocean," Margarethe said, adding that it's something she's passionate about.
"When you just see someone's eyes light up and they make that connection with the ocean, that's by far my favorite part," she added.
Her work schedule was no regular 9-to-5
According to Margarethe, during her time working with the company, the schedule typically consisted of 10-hour workdays, four days a week.
Margarethe said she and the rest of the crew would arrive at the pier where the submarine and its towing boat set off at an exact time, but there was no way of knowing for certain when they'd be back. The end of her shift would often fall within a 45-minute window, depending on the weather and ocean conditions, she said.
Still, Margarethe said she enjoyed having "a pretty consistent schedule" during the day.
She also loved how no day was ever the same, she said, as staff rotated their responsibilities. The submarine was operated by a crew of three: the pilot, the copilot, and the naturalist, who educated visitors about the ocean and the ever-changing marine life.
"I need structure, but also I love that you never know what you're gonna find," she said.
On top of providing a sense of "spontaneity" to the day, the flexible schedule allowed Margarethe and her colleagues to take breaks and learn how to master each role to the best of their abilities, she said.
The crew shared a deep level of trust
Unlike the Titan submersible — which could travel to 13,123 feet below the ocean's surface, according to OceanGate — the submarines Margarethe worked on would go to a depth of around 110 feet.
"Past that point, there's not a whole lot to see," Margarethe said.
Of course, there are risks to traveling in a submarine or submersible. Margarethe said the touring company she worked for had waivers outlining the risk of death to anyone boarding their submarines, like OceanGate did before suspending its operations.
Since everyone in the crew was trained to perform each other's jobs, Margarethe said she could absolutely trust her teammates to react as best as humanly possible if anything were to go wrong.
@mckensea Replying to @stephlg13 everyone got their adrenaline hit that day and we did all go get a drink afterwards but other than that we were fine #submarine #submariner #underwatertiktok ♬ original sound - Mckenzie Margarethe
"You have to have a lot of trust in the people that you work with," she said. "And a lot of trust in not just one other person, but like five other people."
Whenever Margarethe and her crew encountered "small incidences," she saw how quickly everyone reacted, which reassured her, she said. For example, in a TikTok video uploaded June 22, Margarethe recalled experiencing a minor hall flood while on the submarine. The team managed to respond "cohesively" in just 90 seconds, she said.
"I worked with a really great crew," she said. "It was a really fun job."
However, Margarethe thought the pay wasn't great
Despite the responsibility the crew shouldered, they weren't "paid very well" during her time working there, Margarethe said.
"So these people who are like putting on a show and keeping you safe and doing all these things are like really not that well paid," she said.
Toward the end of her two-year stint, which she said included several raises, Margarethe said her salary was around $15 an hour (at the time, the minimum wage in Hawaii was $10.10 an hour). She added that submarine pilots were given a decent living wage, but that she always intended to treat the job as a stepping stone toward working on a research submarine, so had no intentions of staying long-term.
"It was worth it for me for the experience and the knowledge that I gained, and to be able to say that I've worked on submersibles for the future," she added.
A representative for Atlantis Adventures told Insider the offshore crew is paid an average of $28.18 per hour, and said the company "also hires individuals with no maritime experience" who "require extensive training."
"Motivated employees advance to positions like boat captains or submarine pilots after intensive training, certification, and development of maritime experience," they said, adding that "pay is commensurate with experience."
Working in a field filled with 'male ego' was also a challenge, Margarethe said
Besides pay, one of the biggest downsides of the job in Margarethe's experience was being a woman in the field, she said.
"Being a woman at sea is so, so difficult," she said. "Like we have networks because it is so hard, because it is such a toxic male field of like ego and entitlement."
Data on the ratio of women and men working in the private sector of the submarine and submersible industry isn't readily available, however, the ban on women working on submarines in the US Navy was only lifted in 2010. At the time, The Guardian reported that women made up 15% of the active-duty members in the US Navy.
In 2021, data shared by Department of Defense Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion showed that number had only grown by around 5%, with women making up 70,252 out of the 343,223 active-duty members in the US Navy.
Margarethe also said women who work in the submarine and submersible field deal with "astronomical" levels of sexual harassment.
While Margarethe didn't elaborate on her personal experience, she said it's an industry-wide issue.
In 2019, a 75-page investigation into the US Navy Gold crew working on a submarine in Florida found there was a "rape list" targeting female members of staff. First reported by Military.com, the investigation concluded that Navy leaders had failed to address safety concerns among the crew and found that "lewd and sexist comments and jokes were tolerated, and trust up and down the chain of command was nonexistent." In response, Navy officials said two of its former submarine sailors "had been separated from the Navy," and others faced administrative punishment, Military.com reported.
There have been similar reports in the UK — in 2022, the Royal Navy launched an investigation into claims of bullying, misogyny, and sexual harassment against female sailors aboard submarines.
"It is unreal and it's really sad to think about," Margarethe said. "There's a lot of ego, particularly in this submersible world."
The Atlantis Adventures representative did not directly comment on Margarethe's experience as a woman working on a submarine but told Insider the company is "proud of the culture" it has built which "provides employees with an opportunity for success and advancement."
"We don't discriminate based on gender, race, sexual orientation, or anything else," they added.
But it won't hold her back from her dream to explore the sea
Margarethe says she is determined to return to working on a submarine in the future for research purposes, despite the challenges she says women face in the industry as well as the recent events of the Titan.
"We, if anything, need to be moving forward with making submarines even safer and even more sustainable. And we need deep-sea exploration," she said.
"This is our planet," Margarethe added. "This is the one that we live on and we don't have that detailed of a map of it. We need those things."