When she walked into her first student board meeting, Tiara Moore saw “30 eyeballs all on white faces.”
She calls up this startling memory in her paper, “The Only Black Person in the Room,” which was published in a scientific journal of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).
It was while in Moorea, French Polynesia, conducting doctoral research that Moore found out she had been elected to serve as a student board member for ASLO. She was, of course, deeply honored. She also felt the pressure to represent her race, and overnight to address the lack of diversity in an entire field of science. She writes, “Being a female and a minority has been tough as a scientist. People still ask me if I can swim; at our last meeting, someone asked me if I was at work and if I knew where the bathroom was, and the last time I was in the field, someone asked me if I was there to carry the oxygen tank.” Not to mention, the requests to make coffee for other scientists.
Two false narratives spring to mind: that Black people are generally afraid of bodies of water and are not STEM-oriented. Dr. Moore has proved both to be deeply prejudiced myths.
Originally from Greenwood, South Carolina, Moore completed her Bachelor of Science in Biology in 2011 at Winthrop University, S.C., during which she developed an interest in marine science on a research trip to Costa Rica.
In 2013, she received her Master of Science (in Biology with a concentration in Environmental Science) from Hampton University, Virginia. However, even at this Historically Black College or University, most of her professors and her Master’s supervisor were white males.
After conducting research on the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay, she spent two months in Bali, Indonesia, identifying the diversity and abundance of meiofauna in marine sediments across the coral triangle.
Next came a PhD in Biology from UCLA based on research she conducted in Moorea in French Polynesia, Carpinteria Salt Marsh, and Upper Newport Bay.
Then, Dr. Moore completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy, where she used soil eDNA to develop a biodiversity census of Ellsworth Forest, comparing species diversity across management treatments over the past 10 years.
Dr. Moore has gone on to author and collaborate on numerous papers, often pointing out the inequities in her chosen field, even as she continues to turn the tides against the discrimination she has experienced.
A research paper for the NIH’s National Library of Medicine titled “The Black in Marine Science Blueprint,” which Dr. Moore co-authored, states that marine science is “widely recognized as one of the least diverse fields within geoscience. Despite substantial investments in diversity initiatives and resources aimed at engaging underserved communities, the representation and recognition of Black individuals in marine science remain limited.”
Going back to that day when she found herself the only Black person in a room of white experts, she wrote, “Yes, we can swim, we can dive, and we can understand nitrification, eutrophication, and acidification. We want to be allowed in the room.”
She told me: “I remember my first job, where someone said, ‘I’ve never worked with a Black woman with a PhD.’ It was like, ‘Why are you even telling me this?’”
On top of it all, Dr. Moore was a queer Black woman in marine science.
DR. TIARA MOORE IS WORKING FOR OCEAN JUSTICE. PHOTO AT TOP OF PAGE: DEVON HUNTER
“I personally had to be okay with being a Black woman in the field,” she says, “and there was a time when I wasn’t that: I’d wear my hair straight, I’d talk completely different, I was code-switching,” she says, a habit which she no longer has.
“I actually didn’t come out publicly until 2020. Even though I had all the thoughts in the back of my head, I never pursued it until I finished my PhD because I felt I was already so ostracized as a Black woman—to also be gay? This was going to be doing too much.”
But during the coronavirus pandemic, things became even more isolating and depressing. She went from being the only Black person in the lab to being by herself. She was also traumatized by the murders of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor. But she was inspired by seeing how gay Black birder Christian Cooper handled a white woman who had threatened him with police in Central Park while he was birdwatching. Dr. Moore felt motivated to find her community, even if that meant creating it first. She fired off a tweet:
“Hey, where are the other Black marine scientists at?”
The response was overwhelming. She decided to create a safe space for people of all colors, genders, and sexual orientations within lab research. It would be a nonprofit called BIMS (Black in Marine Science).
“It provides this safe space in science that I don’t think has been built before,” she says. “There’s a whole freedom because there is a community. And I’ve been open about my sexuality; my whole team has met my fiancee. There’s no shame at all.”
In just a few short years, Dr. Moore went from a queer woman of color whose sole role models were Oprah Winfrey and Clare Huxtable to the leader of an organization that connects thousands of ocean experts and enthusiasts and empowers through BIMS initiatives.
“When I was getting my degree, they told me there were no Black marine scientists,” says Dr. Moore. “I have had to go on my own journey of finding Black marine scientists and reaching out to them.”
“I’ve gotten to meet Dr. Dawn Wright, who is the only Black person who has been to the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean,” says Dr. Moore, who invited Dr. Wright to be a speaker at BIMS Week.
As well as BIMS, Dr. Moore founded A WOC Space and dedicates her time to mentoring minority women in the lab and in after-school programs.
Her own safe space as a queer woman of color happened in Belize, in Central America, where she had traveled to be part of a coral restoration project. (Belize, with its Caribbean coastline, has the second-largest living barrier reef in the world.)
“When I came here, it was majority Black folks who don’t speak English,” she says. At first, it seemed as though there might be more code-switching needed, but that hasn’t been the case, as far as sexuality is concerned.
“The person who I was introduced to at the coral reef restoration is now my fiancee, Andrea,” she says. “We literally just fell in love. It’s a cute relationship because I get to go scuba diving with my fiancee underwater, holding hands. We’re also working and so yeah, she’s a marine advocate and conservationist as well. It’s been amazing. That’s when I ultimately moved.”
There’s no discernible LGBTQ movement or community in Belize, she says. “In my village, me and Andrea are pretty much it. No one cares or does anything to us. We’re very welcome and free.”
But again, the old specter of inequity in the field of marine science reared its head when she compared the overall budget of the project to what local people on the ground were being paid for their labor and expertise.
“It allowed me to see the racism and environmental exploitation that’s going on in these countries. It was devastating for me,” she says.
And so, with Earth Day on April 22, think of the queer women of color who are helping to save the planet and end environmental injustice. Meanwhile, Dr. Moore is claiming her stake in visibility. “I literally need to be the change that I want to see,” she told TV host Jennifer Hudson in March.
Find out more about Black in Marine Science here. Follow Dr. Tiara Moore here.