I delved into computational biology more out of necessity than anything else. The focus of my PhD was molecular phylogenetics and deep-sea biology, and towards the end I became interested in using new high-throughput sequencing technologies (what I chose to focus on as a postdoc). You couldn't deal with the huge data volumes from 454/Illumina sequencing platforms unless you were savvy on the command line.

• Familiarity with the Unix/Linux command line
• Basic programming ability in some sort of scripting langugage (Perl/Python)
• Ability to install and troubleshoot software
• Cloud computing, use of remote servers and bioinformatics clusters
• Data visualization and ecological statistics (e.g. using R)

I took a 3-week intensive perl programming course during my first postdoc at the Unviersity of New Hampshire - this was invaluable for jumpstarting my coding abilities. Other command line and computational biology skills were self-taught, learned via a mix of trial-and-error, creative Googling, reading introductory books and tutorials, and asking our bioinformaticians a lot of questions.

How diverse are assemblages of microbial eukaryotes in marine enviornments (microscopic animals such as nematode worms, fungi, protists, etc.)? What proportion of species are distributed globally versus regionally restricted in their range? Can we use microbial species as indicators of disturbance, whether natural or human-induced?

If you're coming from a pure biology background, developing your computational abilities may feel like quite a struggle (I know I certainly felt this way) - but keep at it! Those skills are invaluable in the long run, and having an interdisciplinary background will ultimately make you more marketable when it comes to job prospects.