TL;DR: BS Marine Biology is a four-year degree governed by CHED Memorandum Order No. 46, series of 2017, which set it up as a standalone programme separate from BS Biology starting Academic Year 2018-2019. The prescribed minimum is 153 units, including a 6-unit thesis and a 3-unit practicum that CHED puts at 144 hours. There is no PRC board exam for marine biologists. Marine Biology does not appear among the Professional Regulation Commission's 46 Professional Regulatory Boards, so nothing stands between graduation and employment except the job market itself.
If you are choosing this course, two questions matter more than anything else on a brochure: what CHED actually requires you to take, and whether you end up licensed at the end. This guide answers both from the memorandum order itself.
What BS Marine Biology Is, and Why It Is a Separate Degree
Until fairly recently, most Philippine students who wanted to study marine life did it as a major inside BS Biology. That changed with CHED Memorandum Order No. 46, series of 2017, adopted by Commission en banc Resolution No. 231-2017 dated 28 March 2017 and signed in May 2017. The order prescribes the Policies, Standards and Guidelines (PSG) for the Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology programme, and its minimum curricular requirements took effect in Academic Year 2018-2019. Schools that already had authority to run the programme were given three years from effectivity to comply fully.
CHED's stated reason is geographic. The order notes that the Philippines has the fifth-longest coastline in the world at 36,289 kilometres, sits inside the Coral Triangle, and has been identified globally as the centre of marine shore fish biodiversity. The programme exists, in CHED's words, to "develop manpower to help manage, sustain and enhance marine resources."
The practical effect for you: a marine biology degree today is its own qualification with its own prescribed core, not a Biology degree with extra sea-themed electives. Visayas State University is a clear example of the transition. It ran Marine Biology as a field within BS Biology from 2000 and only made it a separate degree in 2018, later receiving a CHED Certificate of Program Compliance for it.
If you are still deciding between the two, our BS Biology guide covers the broader life-sciences degree.
Does BS Marine Biology Have a Board Exam?
No. The Professional Regulation Commission publishes the list of Professional Regulatory Boards it administers, and there are 46 of them. Marine Biology is not on that list. There is no marine biologist licensure examination in the Philippines, no professional identification card for the title, and no legal barrier to practising without one.
This matters when people compare marine biology with the licensed sciences. Two boards on PRC's list sit near this field:
- Fisheries — a regulated profession with its own board and its own licensure exam.
- Environmental Planning — also regulated, also with its own board and exam.
Being adjacent is not the same as being eligible. Each of those professions has its own governing law setting out who may sit the examination, and a BS Marine Biology degree does not automatically qualify you for either. If a licence is part of your plan, read that profession's own law and PRC's own eligibility rules before you enrol, not after you graduate. Our roundup of courses with board exams shows which Philippine degrees do lead to a PRC licence.
The BS Marine Biology Curriculum
CMO No. 46, s. 2017 sets minimum units per component. This is the table that actually governs the degree.
| Component | Minimum Units |
|---|---|
| General Education Curriculum | 36 |
| Foundation Courses | 43 |
| Core Courses | 42 |
| Electives | 9 |
| Thesis | 6 |
| Practicum | 3 |
| NSTP | 6 |
| Physical Education | 8 |
| Total | 153 |
One caveat worth knowing: the curriculum-mapping annex at the back of the same CMO labels the foundation block 42 units and the core block 40 units, slightly different from the component table above. The component table in Article V is the prescriptive one, and it is what schools build against. If a discrepancy ever affects your own load, the department chair and CHED are the ones to ask.
Foundation courses (43 units)
CHED splits these into 7 units of Mathematics, 10 of Chemistry, 6 of Physics, 17 of Biology, and 3 of Earth Science. Concretely, that means calculus and inferential statistics with biometry; inorganic, organic and biochemistry; mechanics, electromagnetism, gravitation, waves, optics and thermodynamics; cell and molecular biology, general physiology, developmental and reproductive biology, ecology, and genetics; plus an earth science course covering climate change, spatial planning in a marine context, geology, monsoon, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and cyclones. CHED requires all biology courses to include a laboratory component.
If you are worried about the maths and physics load, that is the honest picture: this is a heavy natural-science degree before it is a marine one. Senior high school students from the STEM strand come in best prepared.
Core courses (42 units)
Eleven core courses are named in the CMO:
- Oceanography I and Oceanography II
- Marine Botany (mangroves, seagrass, algae)
- Marine Zoology I (Invertebrate) and Marine Zoology II (Vertebrate)
- Marine Ecology
- Marine Microbiology and Fungi
- Coral Reefs
- Integrated Coastal / Marine Resource Management
- Systematics, Biodiversity and Evolution
- Elements of Research, including field sampling design
Each core course must carry a minimum of 2 units of lecture and 1 to 2 units of laboratory, and CHED explicitly allows laboratory units to be satisfied by field work. That is not a formality. Much of this degree happens on a boat, on a reef flat, or in a mangrove stand.
Electives (9 units)
Departments choose electives based on their own faculty and facilities, so this is where schools differ most. CHED's sample list includes ichthyology, fishery management, mariculture, marine chemistry, marine biochemistry, marine natural products, marine pollution, marine birds, marine mammals, marine plankton, marine reptiles, meiofauna, phycology, marine protected areas, remote sensing and GIS, scientific diving, and marine biotechnology. Each elective is a minimum of 3 units, recommended as 2 lecture and 1 laboratory.
If scientific diving or marine mammals is the reason you want this degree, ask the specific department whether they actually offer it. Nothing obliges them to.
Thesis and Practicum: The Two Requirements You Cannot Test Out Of
Thesis (6 units). CHED describes it as the student's initiation into scientific research, guided by a competent adviser. It is split into three 2-unit parts: development of the problem, sampling design and method in the second semester of third year; data gathering and analysis in the first semester of fourth year; and write-up and presentation of results in the second semester of fourth year. The order is blunt that a BS thesis differs from an MS or PhD thesis only in scope and complexity, not in process.
Practicum (3 units, 144 hours). CHED puts the practicum at a minimum of 3 laboratory units equal to 144 hours and recommends scheduling it in the summer after third year. Acceptable placements include museums, scientific expeditions, mariculture operations, marine protected areas, scientific laboratories and research projects.
What CHED Requires the School to Have
The resource requirements in CMO No. 46, s. 2017 are a genuinely useful shortlist when you visit campuses:
- The programme must be run by a marine biology or marine science department, or a unit under Biology or Fisheries, with its own head and its own full-time faculty.
- The head must hold at least a master's degree in marine biology or marine science, or in an allied field.
- The department must have at least five full-time faculty with at least a master's degree in marine biology or an allied field.
- Facilities must include field sampling and collection equipment (plankton net, secchi disk, transect, manta board, core, sieves, water sampler), a wet laboratory with an aquarium set-up, weighing scale, GPS, underwater camera, incubator, drying oven, field thermometer, salinometer and pH meter, a microscope-to-student ratio no worse than 1:5, and access to seawater.
That last one sounds obvious and is not. Ask where the seawater system is and whether students actually use it.
Allied fields CHED recognises for teaching majors and electives are biology, chemistry, pharmacy, fisheries, physics, oceanography, marine science, biotechnology, forestry, environmental science and natural resource management.
Careers After BS Marine Biology
CHED's own list of career paths for graduates covers fisheries, oceanography, conservation and biodiversity, environmental biology, research, pollution and siltation control and management, hazard mitigation, coastal land use, tourism, marine archaeology, and science communication and education.
Translated into employers, that generally means:
- Government — agencies handling fisheries, coastal management, environment and natural resources, and disaster and hazard work. Without a PRC licence, entry to career government posts normally runs through Civil Service eligibility instead; see our guide to government jobs after the civil service exam.
- Research institutes and universities — where a master's degree quickly becomes the real entry requirement, not the bachelor's.
- NGOs and development projects — marine protected area management, community-based coastal resource management, conservation programmes.
- Private sector — environmental consultancy, aquaculture and mariculture, ecotourism and dive operations.
We are not going to publish a salary figure for marine biologists, because there is no reliable published Philippine wage series specific to this occupation that we can stand behind. What is fair to say is that the research and academic routes generally expect postgraduate study, and that the strongest early advantage graduates report is field competence: diving certification, survey methods, species identification and data handling.
Which Schools Offer It
Because BS Marine Biology only became a standalone degree in 2018, the list of schools offering it is shorter than for most science courses, and it changes. Two with established programmes and their own marine facilities:
- Visayas State University offers it through the Department of Biological Sciences under the Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, and holds a CHED Certificate of Program Compliance for the programme.
- Silliman University offers BS Marine Biology through its Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences in Dumaguete, which has been a marine research facility since 1974.
Before enrolling anywhere, confirm the school currently holds CHED authority for this specific programme, not merely for BS Biology. Our guide to CHED-accredited schools explains how to check.
Is BS Marine Biology Right for You?
A few honest filters:
- You must be comfortable in and around water. Field work is not optional in this curriculum, and CHED expects laboratory units to include it.
- The first two years are general science, not marine science. Calculus, chemistry through biochemistry, physics through thermodynamics, and five biology courses come before most of the marine core.
- No licence means the degree alone is the credential. Your thesis, practicum placement and field skills carry more weight in hiring than in licensed professions, where the board exam does that work.
- Postgraduate study is common. If research is the goal, plan for a master's.
If the sea appeals but the science does not, the maritime route is a completely different degree with completely different economics — see our BS Marine Transportation guide.
Ready to compare schools? Browse schools on SchoolFinderPH to look at programmes, locations and tuition across the country.
Sources
- Commission on Higher Education — CMO No. 46, series of 2017, Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology Program
- Professional Regulation Commission — Professional Regulatory Boards
- Visayas State University — BS Marine Biology programme information
- Silliman University — Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences
- SchoolFinderPH — BS Biology in the Philippines
- SchoolFinderPH — Courses with Board Exams
