I don’t see why not. They aren’t going to put you on the sonar phones, that’s for sure. You’ll probably not become captain of a research vessel. But most communications during dives are still done by hand signals. There’s a fundamental rule that you always dive with a buddy and you are never to be out of eyesight from them. There is also lab work, teaching, training, computer analysis of continuous incoming marine data—a whole bunch of stuff you can do.
The actual field work is a small part of marine biology. Divers are young athletes and often former Naval divers, Seals, Special Forces. Even if you earned a Phd, you probably wouldn’t make it to the A-team. They might take you down once or twice to treat the ol’ academic, but that’s about it. The groundbreaking stuff is done at desks and in labs, anyway. It can pay well and you can dive all you want on your own time.
As far as discrimination goes, you can never be sure. Job discrimination is almost unprovable. It depends on the outfit. I’ve found that the Feds are extremely strict about living up to their own laws. Federal outfits, such as NOAA and heavily federally funded groups such as Scripps Oceanic are good ones. I would definitely look into going to a school that already has a research lab in place. There are plenty of them with tuitions ranging from that of the famous Hopkins Marine Station at Stanford and the Hawai’i Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL!) at the University of Hawaii to state colleges like Monterey and Santa Cruz. There’s something like 22 of these schools on the West Coast, 37 on the East Coast and 9 in the Caribbean. All are heavily or solely dependent on federal funding. I would apply to all of them if I wanted to work in Marine Biology. You might have a career in one of those labs. Ready made, before you even leave school.
You need good grades. And don’t fuck around—which could be very tempting at a school like Santa Cruz. It is a highly competitive field.