Great Barrier Reef Scuba Dive Guide Michelle Barry

Michelle Barry, a scuba diving instructor based in Cairns, Australia joins host Tim Sweeney to discuss the beauty and diversity you can experience on a visit to the Great Barrier Reef, the immersive sensory experience of diving, and the importance of reef conservation. Hear what it's like to have a massive bull shark swim meters beneath you from a woman who has spent a great deal of her life underwater. A Master Reef Guide with Pure Snorkeling, Michelle also shares her journey from growing up in New Hampshire in the US to learning to dive in San Diego to moving to Queensland, Australia to do what she loves in one of the most premier places on earth to do it. The conversation also touches on the health of the reef, the impact of climate change, and the role of tourism in conservation efforts.

Chapters

01:10
Exploring the Great Barrier Reef

02:26
Meet Michelle Barry: Scuba Diving Expert

03:33
Journey to Becoming a Dive Instructor

06:13
Life Underwater: Diving Experience

08:57
Cairns: The Gateway to Adventure

09:42
The Job of a Dive Instructor

12:34
Understanding the Great Barrier Reef

18:10
The Immersive Experience of Diving

21:15
Health of the Great Barrier Reef

24:32
Personal Connection to the Reef

27:51
The Dynamics of Reef Predators

43:05
Shark Species of the Great Barrier Reef

50:10
Conservation Efforts and Eco-Tourism

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Transcript

Hi folks, my name's Tim Sweeney. Welcome in to the Long Distance Lounge. On this podcast, we go on virtual trips, talking to people, doing interesting things in cool places all around the globe. Before we get into this week's episode, I want to say a very special thanks to everyone who listened to episode one and also of course, Runar Carlsen who called in from the West fjords of Iceland. Really fun to talk to Runar and really appreciate everybody listening.

All the feedback, all the positive feedback, even the people who told me ways to improve it. Really appreciate that. Again, hope you share it with fellow travel lovers or just people who like hearing conversations with interesting people. On this episode, we're going very far from Iceland. We are going to Australia, a place that I lived for three years. Specifically, we're going to tropical North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. We're going to talk to Michelle Barry.

She's a woman who's been leading scuba diving and snorkeling trips out on the reef for 16 years now. This is a really fun discussion because I got to kind of relive my own experiences diving and snorkeling on the reef years ago. It was actually my first and my only scuba diving experience, not because it went sideways. It was actually really amazing experience, but I just have way too many gear sports in my personal portfolio, let's say. Can't afford any more gear sports.

don't have any place to put more gear. But I wrote about that whole day in my book. The book is called Yank Down Under, a drink and a look around Australia. If you want to check it out, you can find it on Amazon and elsewhere online. ⁓ But Michelle's talking to me from Cairns. So this is a town in Queensland. It's a really popular place to visit the Great Barrier Reef from, quite touristy. But it's also a place with a rather rowdy backpacker nightlife.

and it has an ancient rainforest above town called the Daintree Rainforest. I did all of the above, the nightlife and the rainforest the next day. We'll touch on that with Michelle. So let's jump into it. Here's Michelle Barry, a scuba dive guide on the Great Barrier Reef.

Michelle, thank you for joining me. I appreciate it. First of all, where are you joining from? You're your follower. are are far apart right now.

Speaker 2 (02:28)
Yes, I am. And it's Sunday. We're even a day apart, aren't we? It's Sunday here and beautiful Sunday morning in Cairns, Australia, in Queensland.

Speaker 1 (02:37)
All right, that's just kind of like the jumping off point for the Great Barrier Reef in a ways, right? But I guess we have to start with the accent because you definitely don't sound Australian.

How did you end up there? Where are you from? Etc.

Speaker 2 (02:52)
Yeah, I'm originally from New Hampshire in the United States. And yeah, I eventually moved to graduated college at the University of New Hampshire to go very far and then moved to sunny San Diego, California for nearly a decade. And that's where I learned to dive. That's when you start looking at diving bucket list icons. And of course, Great Barrier Reef is number one. And when I was looking to become a more professional, cause I really fell in love with diving.

as as I did it and I wanted to become more professional, I kind of looked into where you would learn to become an instructor. And it seemed to me from everything I was reading that the Great Barrier Reef was like the Harvard University kind of learning to dive because of all the regulations, that millions of people are coming there to dive every single year. And they have this amazingly managed Marine Park. So this would be the place to go. So I decided to take a year off from my life in California and do my dive instructor working holiday visa in Cannes.

And then I never ever went back.

Speaker 1 (03:54)
Wow. Well, we got a lot in common, actually. didn't realize that. So I grew up in New England and then I spent seven years in San Diego as well. then to Australia directly, not to be dive instructor. But so I guess back up just a step, like what is your official, I guess, title, how many say, specifications, what's the word I'm looking for that you need to achieve all this, to do just a certain amount of hours and then you can guide. does that work?

Speaker 2 (04:01)
There you go.

So I am a PADI dive instructor, and that's the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. The qualifications are slightly different now than when I did it, but to become a professional, quote unquote, dive guide, which was the dive master, it's the first professional level qualification. At the time you needed 100 dives under your belt. So we hit a source of, luckily I was in California, so you could just shore dive. So I was just filling tanks and me and a couple of my dive buddies who were also in the course just go diving right offshore. And somebody's amazing.

places, you know, no lookouts, no nothing, just very, very, um, very, very unsafe action. But we did it anyway. It was great. I got to eat the dives on my belt. Um, technically anybody can be a dive guide at any level. If you're a certified diver, if you're like an advanced diver and you're like, Hey, I want to, I want to lead the dive. Okay. Have fun. get us back. But you technically can, but if you want to, you know, charge somebody to be a guide, you'd want your guide to be.

a bit more experienced. So I did the dive master and then fell in love and decided again to move to San Diego, to Queensland, sorry, and do my IDC here, which is the instructor development course. So that is a two week course of intensive training, learning all about the patty standards. And that's a book that's like

every standard, every situation, every risk that could possibly come up and you have to pretty much know these because at the end there's an exam and you could be tested on any aspect of the book.

Speaker 1 (05:54)
you diving like five or six days a week or what's the?

Speaker 2 (05:57)
Yeah, so I was keeping a book very fastidiously until about 3,400 or so dives. We did calculate based on my dive computers because I've had the same dive computer for six years and you can kind of track an overall amount. So I know I'm around the over 8,000 dives.

Speaker 1 (06:18)
Wow. So you're spending a fair, let's say percentage of your

Speaker 2 (06:22)
Life underwater.

Speaker 1 (06:24)
incredible. Can

you talk a little bit about the place you're in too? First

that area, it booming now, I'd say? Like it's hugely tourist, right? Like Dupu coming in, it's a lot of backpackers come in, they work their way down the coast, like all the way down the East Coast, but it's a mixture of everybody, right? You have families coming there, you have retirees, people from all over the world, and young people as well. It's pretty lively for not a big place.

Speaker 2 (06:52)
really is. I think the main thing about, I love living in Cairns. I think the main thing that makes Cairns, Cairns is because we have the international airport. So right now you can get direct flights to the U.S. and direct flights to Fiji from Cairns. I'm not working for the airline, but I just think that's impressive. Being from New Hampshire, who is like biggest, like, whoa, we can get all the way to like Detroit or like Houston from, like, I can go to Tokyo, Japan.

or Los Angeles from our little old airport, is about 10 kilometers from me right now, which is insane. And it's still such a small town. It's like 250,000 people actually live here full time. And it's weird because about 70 % of them have never been out to the reef.

Speaker 1 (07:36)
was amazed at that actually when I lived in Australia when they get time off, they have like three weeks off. It's not like US holidays. So they go somewhere far and they don't end up spending a lot of time in their own backyard. So that's interesting. But I also, I guess I should mention it's not just the reef either because there's the rainforest which is quite

Fascinating

Speaker 2 (07:55)
the old continuously growing rainforest on the planet, is incredible. 180 million years, like their ancestors, they're just still growing on time, which is incredible.

Speaker 1 (08:06)
Yeah, it's a pretty sort of mystical place. The idea on a foggy day was just what I needed after a big night out in Cairns, let me tell you.

Speaker 2 (08:14)
breathing in the cleanest oxygen ever. It's just as good as being on a drip after, you know, night in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (08:20)
I don't think I'm the first person to do a sort of rain rainforest with a hangover. So let's talk about what, what the job is.

you taking out beginners? You're taking out experienced divers. How does it work? Cause I, I told you before, I dove there. It was the only time I did two dives on my trip out to the reef had never done it before. And I was kind of amazed that it was even an option. You know, I think it was like a hundred bucks more to dive in a day to snorkeling. And I said, well, what the hell I'm on the Great Barrier Reef. Like this is the time to do it.

It was amazing.

Speaker 2 (08:52)
so I just, I finished that roll up last year, but I spent 14 years as a, ⁓ an underwater scuba instructor guide and expedition leader all over the Great Barrier Reef. So first of all, knowing that, you know, understanding yourself, being comfortable, ⁓ and being able to survive underwater for any period of time. And then it's then taking people and being responsible like yourself when you're an intro diver, you have very minimal training.

I am 100 % responsible for the outcomes of that dive. I can't expect you, aside from the basic few things that I taught you about mass clearing, breathing in and out of the regulator, don't take it out of your mouth and try to breathe water because you can't. It's just a reminder. Those little things, you know? And then swim you around the reef and then evade, you know, all the poisonous marine stingers, sharks, and, you know, anything else that could possibly interfere, even though they're the least problematic things you would need to worry about.

The people underwater are the most dangerous.

Speaker 1 (09:48)
Exactly, that's what I was gonna say. I remember the guy who was my personal guide, and as you said, they basically hold onto you in the first dive, and then he let me swim next to him on the second dive. But what I remember, mean, he did all the signals, this means up, this means down, this means shark, and I was like, I'm pretty sure I'll get that one. Yeah, and then he said just to remember to breathe normally and don't hold your breath. I said, didn't even.

Speaker 2 (10:09)
You'll never forget that one.

Speaker 1 (10:17)
occurred to me ⁓

Speaker 2 (10:21)
Yeah,

even babies, it's a mammalian instinct. You put a baby underwater, they will hold their breath and you can swim them around and they know to hold their breath. It's part of our evolution really. So that's why you have to remind people, you have a breathing apparatus, so you need to utilize the breathing apparatus. Don't hold your breath underwater, don't need to. And that's a hard thing for people to get around.

Speaker 1 (10:46)
I guess we should talk about some facts of the reef, because it's massive. It's massive. Yeah. The size of California or something crazy, like.

Speaker 2 (10:49)
Good.

Like it's 2300 kilometers long. Well, the Great Barrier Reef, it's huge. Like yeah, Italy is a good marker. So like I always tell people you wouldn't swim from Milan to Sicily in one go and you are not gonna swim from that equivalent here on the GBR. You're gonna get one small section

Speaker 1 (11:15)
how far out of the port are you traveling? think we took like 40 minutes or something. was to the first site and then, I don't know, 30 minutes to a different one for the afternoon. that generally like, what's, what's the difference from going to one spot to another, to another, like for people who have no idea what the reef is like when they experience it. mean, is it, is it what you'll see as far as like coral? Is it fish or they're all pretty similar?

Speaker 2 (11:41)
Crocodiles.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that's people always like you're joking. I'm like, no, actually the coastline as quite a few ⁓ prehistoric ancient predators crocodiles who are not afraid of people and they will eat you if they have the chance. So yeah, we don't snorkel offshore. We don't go to the beach. There are areas we have like net where we corral the humans and they're allowed to splash around in there.

⁓ But that's not to say that one won't get in and over or around the other way. So we do have quite a lot of lifeguard monitoring. That's the same reason with the reef that further away from shore you go, the less likelihood that you'll encounter a crocodile. However, there have been some as far as the outer reefs, like the Agincourt, even a few years ago, there was one in the Port Douglas.

off of Fort Douglas at one of the Agincourt's, the pontoon.

we all are, like, as soon as you leave the harbor, there's definitely a level of human versus nature out there where there's a connection. So if anyone sees anything good or bad, yes, they're going to report it to Channel 16, which is our general marine channel. So if, you know, if someone would see something from a helicopter, they would most likely radio the initial boats in the area. However, from being on the water for 15 years, no one has actually done that.

Speaker 1 (13:00)
So you are going, it's normal for you guys, like 40 minutes, an hour, that how far the trip is? If you don't took a trip there, would be meeting you.

Speaker 2 (13:08)
You do a minimum of 40 minutes to get out to the at least. Yeah, we want to get offshore. The way the reef is set up is on an ancient continental shelf. So that ancient continental shelf is around 64 kilometers out to east. From there, it tapers off down to thousands of meters deep or thousands of feet if you want to go that way. So where we go on those outer reefs, those are kind of the ones that are more...

direct contact with the open ocean, which is why you sometimes get more of a flourishing different styles of reef rather than inside. You can imagine all that fresh, cool water is kind of bringing things slowly inward, but it's got miles and miles of coastline before, or miles and miles of reef before it actually hits the coastline. That's why you notice like different style of water, because that's where you also have the fresh water coming out. So you've got thousands and thousands of tons of fresh water pouring out from the other side. So anything further away from the land is going to be.

in a more balanced and consistent ecosystem so it can flourish a little bit more. So those are the places we end up trying to head out to to show people. During flood season, you'll get like a lot more sediment and runoff. So that makes it really difficult for coral to grow because it's a photosynthesizing animal. So you get a lot of sediment over the top and it just doesn't get as much sunshine. So it doesn't grow as fast and strong as it would further out with as ample amounts of sunshine and clear water.

Speaker 1 (14:34)
Okay, interesting. what is that? What is it that people are? I guess seeing someone who has no idea they listen to this and I go I've never thought of doing that never thought of snorkeling scuba diving for me. I was stunned at the colors like it's not even possible to I Guess you see it on TV on even some amazing like high-def photography and stuff. Yeah, it doesn't do it justice when you're there.

Speaker 2 (15:00)
It's a feeling as well because you're immersed in it. You're not only seeing it, but you're hearing it. You're feeling it like the movement of the water, the sounds of the reef is, you know, it's a very loud city out there. Most of those animals are making noises constantly, communicating with each other, the sound of them eating, the sound of them killing. And yeah, it's, it's life happening all around you. And it's so, so overwhelming once you're getting all of the sounds and then you're kind of

constricted and you realize that you're something smaller, you are not in charge of the situation anymore. But in the best way possible, you're just become this, like especially snorkeling, which I love you just this passive thing floating on the surface watching this half life happen naturally below. And everything is just kind of, you know, they're they're unfazed by you being there.

which generally when you're going out into wildlife, wildlife is a bit more skittish, but here it's so confident in its existence that you're not having everything running away. In fact, you're having fish and turtles come and have a look at you and like, what are you? Hello, how are you? You can just become part of something greater. And I think that whole immersive experience is really what you remember from the Great Barrier Reef.

You know, people always talk about those rose-tinted glasses when you leave, everything was much brighter and the smells were more definitive. But that's what I tell my guests all the time. It's not about what you're going to see today. It's the experience, that overall feeling that you're going to walk away with. That's what's going to stick with you for the rest of your life. You know, that's that emotional connection. And that's my job to help create those experiences as a guide out there.

Speaker 1 (16:36)
Yeah, I remember thinking that. think I wrote it in my book that it was, you're even when you're snorkeling, you sort of have one of those moments where you pause in life and go, I'm here and like, and I'm very like present, I guess, if that may sound cheesy, but maybe you it every day. It's different, but yeah, you really want to just absorb and take as much of it in. Cause first the colors are just wowing you like you can't.

Speaker 2 (17:01)
Yeah, and the fate. Yeah. It's

like Willy Wonka's, know, candy factor and you get in like everything's everywhere and like, you're like, how did that get to be that? Why is it, what is You know, like everything is just so foreign. There's nothing like it on land that compared to what you see underwater. There's nothing. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (17:19)
You because you see a fish that's like some crazy color or multitude of colors. It'd be blue or whatever. Yeah. And you think I've never seen that before and may never again. And then you turn your head and there's like three other fish that are. ⁓

Speaker 2 (17:34)
It's crazy. Yeah

Speaker 1 (17:36)
It's quite mind boggling actually, yeah. I was reading a little bit in preparation for this conversation about ⁓ sort of the health of the reef or some studies done and things they do like cyclones, whether it's, guess cyclones do damage, so that's hurricane in the Southern Hemisphere for people who don't know. Also, in climate change, there's quite an effect on the reef. how is it doing health-wise?

Speaker 2 (18:05)
That's kind of saying how am I doing health wise? know, it's fluctuation. know, there's a lot going on below the surface. don't know unless you test for it. ⁓ with the Great Barrier Reef overall, if you go on the science side and you look at the stats, we do have the highest hard coral cover that we've had since we started doing surveys 34 years ago with Ames. That's not to say that this is the best now because who knows, 50 years ago we could have had, you know, we most likely had a higher.

coral cover percentage, but what we have seen is that we have been tracking upwards. But even with that said, that's more from the tour side coming who are fearful that when they come here, they're going to see nothing but dead white patches of coral. You will not see that. There are other places in the world that you think you're going to go to and see this incredible coral, and you will not see what you will see here. Here is still one of the most dynamic, diverse, incredible places to see.

on the planet and I have dived all over the world. There's still nothing like this. However, climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef. Those warming sea temperature, these tiny little coral polyps, they can't run and hide. They can't, they're in their little stony houses that they've been building for hundreds and hundreds of years. Their conditions have been the exact same since the Great Barrier Reef was created or started.

being created around 20,000 years ago. The reef we have today is around 3000 years old and has been stable up until the industrial age. And that's with cyclones and all these crazy creatures that are now getting blown out of proportions like, you know, crown of thorns outbreaks, it all comes down to the changing climate. So as we are doing a lot to see what we can do to help if at all.

right now that it's a group of organizations together called RRAP or the Reef Restoration Adaptation Program and they are looking at large-scale deployment options of helping reefs ⁓ stabilize by deploying these little tiles with baby corals already on them ready to go and then just try and help repopulate reefs so we can help kind of restore reefs at a larger scale but

We can't do this 24 hours a day. The reef is a nonstop thing. is, it's an existing being like altogether. Everything's out there 24 hours a day, trying to survive. and the best thing we can do to help us survive is to let it be stable. And that stability comes down to the temperatures of the ocean and the amount of frat that we're putting out in the ocean, plastics. Cause now we've seen that corals are actually ingesting microscopic plastic.

Speaker 1 (20:54)
Really? Wow.

Speaker 2 (20:57)
as well because they're just feeding whatever comes by in the water column. So they don't discriminate. They don't know that they have taste buds. Basically, that's polluting the oceans. ⁓ The biggest, that's the Great Barrier Reef. Other than that, the Great Barrier Reef has been growing for thousands and thousands of years and it will continue to do so until, of course, such as us is acted upon against it.

Speaker 1 (21:14)
so resilient.

Speaker 2 (21:15)
Resilient,

yeah, there's a lot of people in the Marine Park hate that word for resilience because it's not even resilience, it's survival at this

Speaker 1 (21:22)
And for you who sees it multiple times a week, do you start to almost like memorize what's what like how well do you know it now?

Speaker 2 (21:29)
it's like talking about my backyard. can see videographers posting images of reefs and it's just like fish or like a small section. And I know exactly where that is. like, that's two towers, Ruben 10. Cause I know the combination of the type of animals, the amount of the saturation of the certain fish, plus the combination of the types of corals and the colors of corals. And for some, in my head, it just triggers. I'm like, I know where that is. That's there.

Speaker 1 (21:53)
Which I guess, I mean, it's such a constant ecosystem. Is that the right word? I don't even know. But there's consistency to it is what I'm saying. Like, for you to be able to return back and see the same things over a long period of time.

Speaker 2 (22:00)
There is, there is.

But each reef is so dynamic and so different. And I guess what a lot of people don't understand, they're like, I've seen the reef. You went to one reef. You haven't seen the reef. You've seen one reef and you've only seen one section of the reef. Cause each section of the reef is so diverse to the other section of the reef. Like one is the high impact zone where the waves 90 % of the year are constantly smashing over the top. So you don't have all these, you know, branching corals. Cause the second they grow there, they get smashed. They get.

these different types of corals that are growing there and a lot more softer corals, a lot more sponges, and those come with different animals that hang out there. So you go to this side of the reef and you get this type of cast of characters. You move around to the lagoon side where it's a lot calmer, a lot more sunshine. That's when you get all the dynamic formations, a lot of those crazy colors. And then you move to another area, which is fast moving water through, and you get a lot more of these plate corals where you just see plate after plate after plate stacked up because the water is just bringing food constantly through.

So the coral polyps can just feed on little zooplankton that's flying by. Every section of one reef is so different. And imagine each reef is so different. So as you start experiencing different reefs, as I have, I'll start seeing the general type of creatures or animals and wildlife that are there and the way the water moves dictates the way the coral grows.

Speaker 1 (23:29)
Yeah, it's cool. I can see how excited you get.

Speaker 2 (23:31)
in my head. I'm thinking of Briggs Reef and I'm going down Tuesday. I cannot wait. I'm so excited to go back to this place.

Speaker 1 (23:37)
What I was amazed at was the tides too, because I think, you know, most of us live any connection to the ocean. You surf, I've surfed and so you know it only from a coastal standpoint. Is the tide in, is it out? How does it change the waves, et cetera. But even on the reef, from say morning to afternoon, I remember the depth of the water changing. And how far below the surface the reef was at one point and then how shallow it was.

Speaker 2 (23:59)
quite dramatically. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you're at, you know, between, we'll get below, we'll get the tide below the reef. So you actually can keep your head out of the water and you're looking at the shallowest part of the reef. And those are usually during king tide events. And then that same reef, two hours later, there'll be 10 feet of water or three, meters of water above the reef. And you're just like, I can't even, I can't even reach it anymore. And that's all in one, in one day.

And that's a huge part of the protection of the reef as well. there's ample amounts of water coming through. Just in those deep water aspects, that's when you get like a lots of hunters and predators on the top of the reef, because it's a whole new world that they didn't have access to six hours before. Now they have these entire planes at the top of the reef where that they can now come and hunt. So if you're a smaller shark, you don't want to be out in the deep water with all the big boys. You don't want to be competing with them.

for the fast fish. So where would you go? You'd go to the little nursery, like the junior little event on the top of the reef as the tide's coming in or as the tide's going out. Because then once the tide's out, you're out. You can't go flopping around up there unless you're an epaulette shark. Then you can just walk across the top of the reef, which is incredible.

Speaker 1 (25:16)
So I have to ask you about the predators because I remember, I think I mentioned I did two dives and on the second one the guy said, okay, now I know where this shark hangs out. Which I thought was a funny thing to say, but it's true.

Speaker 2 (25:33)
No, white-tip reef sharks like they have spots that they hang out during the day like good hiding spots and they just kill out and rest during the day because they're nocturnal hunters.

Speaker 1 (25:40)
I see. Okay. Well, he said he will go down and look for this shark. And I remember thinking, man, there's a, there's a steep learning curve to this sport, you will. Like in the morning we were telling me like, don't hold your breath. Now we're looking for sharks three hours later. So let's, let's back up then to my question about the fish and just, yeah, stuff you, you see out there that people would just be wait, what this is normal for you in a day of work.

Speaker 2 (26:06)
There's

a few things I've seen probably every terrifying and swam with and had an interaction with every scary predator that you can imagine. Anything that you can think of except for a great white shark and a crocodile. But I'm sure, I am sure that a crocodile has seen me in the water because I've been in a couple of places where I was like, I, shouldn't be doing this. ⁓ we're too close to shore. Yeah. Off of port Douglas. But I was with someone who has experience in those regions and there's a

you know, biologists. was like, all right, well, you know what you're doing. So if I died, it's your fault. But other than that, on the reef itself, I've swum with numerous tiger sharks, the most venomous snakes in the world being the olive sea snakes, and they're the sweetest creatures ever.

but they would have to bite you like on your pinky because what they hunt normally would be like squirrely little fish. So they've got to get the fish far enough inside its mouth to inject it with that venom. And that will just knock them out straight away. ⁓ so I've been in the water with the deadliest jellyfish. I've seen boxes, I've seen oceanic boxes, which they're much, much bigger than.

Boxed jellyfish that you would see. Yeah, boxed jellyfish. And the Irakangi, I've seen them in the water as well. Irakangi is the most deadly jellyfish in the world. is this big. And to put your finger large, so you won't see it coming, which is why we're wearing the stinger suits, but it will, depending on the, physiology, it could be imminent death, essentially.

Speaker 1 (27:19)
It's the Air Kanji.

tip of your finger, okay?

Speaker 2 (27:39)
So we all wear stinger suits, but I've never actually seen anyone stung by them. And I've taken tens of thousands of people to the reef. But we all are wearing our protective gear

we wear wetsuits in the winter, which were pretty much covered fully in the wintertime. So we do have that same level of protection. So it's just kind of naturally that we're

wearing everything. And we exchange them out. Like literally there's a day where we get rid of the stinger suits and we bring the wetsuits on. there's no like lag time where we're like stinger season to wetsuit season. It's at the end, end of stinger season, which is when the lifesavers use their little strainers and they said that they haven't been catching any sort of deadly jellyfish then.

They officiate that stinger season is over and we put wetsuits on the boat. But by then the guests are normally cold. So we've already put wetsuits on the boat for them.

Other predators I've seen, I've seen massive hammerhead sharks. These are my favorite. These are still something that stops my heart when I see them. Massive tiger sharks. ⁓

seeing them in the water, Bull sharks. was four of them. Not one bull shark. There's four of them. And then one of them, my God, I've just, yeah, I keep getting flashes of moments we were on an expedition, snorkeling expedition actually, and it was surveying the reef. So there's a, an annual thing called the great reef census.

And we did a all women science trips. combined the Great Reef Census with other surveying things we wanted to do. So sea cucumbers and sea grasses. We wanted to survey some deep water, sea grass. We put all these different scientists, all women on a boat. So we were swimming on those Georgia's wall actually in ribbon five. So we were, we went in October and October's also coincides with Marlin season. All blue, striped Marlin, black Marlin, blue Marlin, they spawn.

during that October month. So what they do is they generally come into the Marine Park when they spawn because they want their little babies to be in essentially a nest rather than be out in the big blue ocean. You know, there's more opportunity for them to grow and strengthen in the protection of the Marine Park. So they'll come and spawn in here. During that time of year, lots of fishermen are trolling the same places that we were. So they're out looking for bait fish

So if you are, if you're a fishing boat and they usually do it by trawling, which is when the boat's still moving kind of slowly and you've got a bunch of different lines out the back. If they do hook one of these delicious fish and like a mahi or a tuna or a mackerel, you have very little time to get that fish back onto the boat before you catch something even bigger, especially if it's alive. And if you're catching bait and you catch a mackerel.

that mackerel is going to start sending out signals and those signals can be read by apex prunders very quickly as a distressed animal, which means dinner time.

Speaker 1 (30:21)
So you don't be snorkeling near that, anywhere near that.

Speaker 2 (30:23)
No, so we were, because we needed to serve anything, we thought we were close to the reef. So I was like, ⁓ we're fine. We're like, on the reef. I feel like the reef is like my little, you you're safe when you're on the reef. But the problem is the boat wasn't tied up because we were at places that nobody snorkels. We're in very remote areas. This isn't where we would take you snorkeling. This is where people go fishing or where expedition liver boards go. So we were out there on the reef.

And we needed to get back to the boat, which means we need to leave the safety of the reef and swim across blue water. So as we're like, blap, blap, blap splashing on the surface, that's when we started looking down and seeing the darker shadows starting to rise up and kind of moving around. And they didn't, of course, strike. They were just kind of surveying us because they don't know what we are. So they're assessing what we are. We smell different. We don't smell like fish. We move different. And we're very colorful because we're wearing all these crazy stinger, sooty outfits.

So we're easily identified by the boat if we get a little far because we're in remote conditions. So they're looking at us and we're looking at them. We know exactly what they were. They didn't know what we were. But one of the guys in my group knows that with these types of sharks, sometimes you need to make the first move to show that you're not scared and that you do see them. Cause they think they're like, we're sneaking up on you. We're going to strike ready. So he swum down. and then they kind of went, my God, what is this? Cause they're also wary as well. You know, they're not.

They've survived for millions and millions of years, hundreds of millions of years. So they're also, you know, and they're not starving, you know, they're not desperate. So they're just watching, waiting. And then when he swam down, they kind of slowed up because they're like, wait a minute, that's weird reaction from Prey. Prey doesn't usually attack back. So they kind of just sat and watched. And by that time we'd made it back to the boat. I think one of the girls actually ran on the surface with her fingers up, which was impressive. And then the rest of us...

Yeah. We all learned who was friends with who at that point. It's like, slowest one loses. So it's went back to boat, gone on, nothing happened. The next site over, we were all very, I was super skittish. like, oh, my shoes. Everyone stay close together. feel like we're doing through together. You're okay. It's when you're out splashing around alone. So we're all together in our snorkeling groups and we come back to the boat. hadn't seen anything. We're like, oh, great survey, everybody. And as we're all waiting, get to the boat.

The biggest bull truck I've ever seen crosses probably four meters underneath us. Like I could have bent down and just, and he was just calmly, it would have been a big female because they were so robust to like, and she just bruised so calmly underneath us, effortlessly. And we were all just like, everyone's heart stopped. She would have thought we were all dead because none of us were giving any impulses that we were like frozen and just watch this thing.

didn't react to us at all and just swam off. She just heard the boat came in, investigated, it was like, those aren't fish, whatever. And then, and then moved on. And it was that moment. I can still see the top of this shark, this in the size, which is so incredible. And she just passed by us. Like none of them, we weren't under any threat. Obviously everything in our bodies says we were, which is good. That's what we're supposed to do. That's how we stay alive. But.

just being in the presence of these amazing creditors and watching them assess us. It's like being sussed out by a lion out on a safari, having a lion looking at you and deciding, you know what, I'm not gonna kill you today. I'm gonna let you just go on and live. That's kind of what it felt like. ⁓

Speaker 1 (33:59)
Well for people who haven't any experience in Australia, that's the difference between a crocodile and a shark, right? Because the crocodile will eat you.

Speaker 2 (34:07)
Well, no, he was just like, you're good. Yeah, because they save all their food for later anyway So they just kill as much as they can stash it away And then once it's all rotted and gross then they'll eat it which is they don't discriminate terrible No, maybe just really at least shark. They're like, you know, we'll check you out first, you know

Speaker 1 (34:24)
Bull shark is like, mean they eat hubcaps, they eat everything, right?

Speaker 2 (34:28)
Yeah, well luckily because of where we were on the reef too, we were on the outer continental shelf. On the other side of where we were, it dropped down 900 meters straight away. So we were up in the open ocean, it was very deep and it was very blue, so it very clear. they knew we could see them and they could see us. So that was the big difference too. If you're dealing in brackish water with bull sharks, that's another animal.

that is a hit before, that is a hit to try. This one, could see us, it could smell us, so all of the other senses were able to be engaged. If the bull shark is only using all those little black, I'm forgetting the word right now, but they've got this sensory, their fifth sense basically, that's just all around their mouth so they can detect the most minuscule amount of electrical impulses and heartbeats in the water. And then on top of that, tasting, they can taste if there is blood in the water, but.

in those murky brackish waters, if you sense something, rather than just eat it, you hit it with your powerful head, you ram it. That's why they're known as bull sharks, because they'll ram you. And then once you're disoriented, they've touched you, they've sensed you, they know a little bit more if you're food or not. They'll then give you a try and eat you.

No, no, that's why we were a bit nervous. Even hammerheads too, there were, I mean, there's no listed attacks from them, but they're so big in the water and so like different from anything else that you've seen in your terrestrial life that you're just like, and they're very big as well.

Speaker 1 (36:02)
And they look mean too. They just look mean.

Speaker 2 (36:04)
Just the way the head moves when it's coming straight for you. And then they always have their mouth open slightly. So you can always see these like snaggly little teeth on the bottom. They're just kind of like, God, it is, it's intense. Exciting though.

Speaker 1 (36:20)
Yeah,

those are crazy stories. I would be very, very skittish getting back in the next time.

Speaker 2 (36:25)
I

keep going back for more. I keep going back for more. No, I feel more protected underneath. On the surface, like snorkeling around, I think I'm more, slightly more nervous than I am when I'm diving. However, when I'm snorkeling, I have a better peripheral. I can see much more of the landscape around me than I can when I'm diving. When I'm diving, you're kind of like blinders on, so you're kind of only seeing what you're looking directly in front of you. you don't, you really don't know what's behind you or to the sides of you. unless you're kind of...

being aware of situation looking around.

caveat is too, is of all of the experiences that I had, maybe out of my tens of thousands of times I've been out of the water, not including just the 8,000 plus diving, I can't even tell you how many thousands of hours I've spent snorkeling. These encounters are super, like less than 1%. You are so incredibly lucky if you see something like that.

Speaker 1 (37:21)
you will be blown away by the experience, that is for sure.

Speaker 2 (37:24)
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (37:25)
So I have a little tradition here. I want to give one question to a kid. So I got a question from one kid. His name is Miles. He's eight years old.

Speaker 2 (37:36)
Hi Michelle and Miles. My question is what kind of sharks live in the Great Barrier Reef? We did, but we didn't cover all of them. If Miles comes to the reef on a snorkel tour with me, there are two sharks that most likely he'll see. The number one shark most people see, and it's the one that that instructor was going to take you to see, and that is called a white tip reef shark. Not a great white shark, a white tip reef shark.

Speaker 1 (37:41)
covered a lot of sharks but what

and start.

Speaker 2 (38:05)
white tip reef shark, they're really, really cool. Not too many people talk about this, but they're one of the few sharks that can actually fold their pectoral fins in and the dorsal fin down and they can snake through crevasses like an eel to flush out prey or to hunt. Yes. So they're looking for like your smaller fish on the reef crabs, you know, like very like your actual reef cleaner. They typically will stay around.

Speaker 1 (38:23)
gonna use this. Yeah

Speaker 2 (38:35)
one particular reef, sometimes they'll go to neighboring reefs and stuff, but you generally will see the same white tip reef shark every time you go to a spot. So that's why that instructor on Ocean Freedom that you knew, just like, Hey, this is where the shark hangs out. Cause generally they'll have a favorite cleaning station where they get their dental work done from the night before where they get cleaned, little cleaner rat, sword. Or they're just taking a nap cause they do most of their hunting at nighttime. So usually they'll just be kind of like.

hiding under a ledge, having a little snooze during the daytime, opening and closing their mouth to pump oxygen over their gills. So, you know, very relaxed. When you're snorkeling, you could see a black-tipped reef shark, especially if you're around islands. Again, smaller shark, but it looks like a big tough shark, but they don't grow very, very big. Maybe a meter and half. They've got a distinctive black tip on the dorsal, hence the name. And they're generally kind of, again, working

the top shallows of the reef where the bigger sharks don't hunt. So that's their kind of patrol area. If you're super lucky, you'll see a gray reef shark. So gray reef sharks will typically be in the bluer water. So if you're snorkeling along the edge of a drop-off or somewhere that plummets down to 10, 15 meters, you could see a gray reef shark. That is a shark that you would look at and be like, wow, that's a real shark. That's what they look like on TV. ⁓

big meaty guy and it's got a big dorsal fin and you know, this kind of a gray stripe on the tail. So those are the three most common ones you'll see. There's some other really cool specialty sharks you might see. I touched on it before. We have an endemic shark called an epilate shark. So epilate means is, you know, the shoulders when you get epilates on your shoulders for status. So this one has epilates as in small shoulders. So it actually has small shoulder joints. So it can actually walk.

on top of the reef. So David Attenborough did a great video on this shark. course Of course he did. It can actually at low tide, it can walk from rock pool to rock pool. So it can come out of the water and on its little shoulders into the next pool and then hunt in the pool. when all these little fish are trapped, they can't get out and walk across, he can or she can. So this shark can actually walk from pool to pool and hunt in those really shallow areas.

When we're snorkeling, we can generally see them on the tops of the reef. So it's one of the few really cool sharks that you would see snorkeling that you would not normally see diving. Another shark up here that we get in smaller sizes, but they're also in New South Wales. You can see them down there diving, but it's a Wobbegong shark, tasseled Wobbegong. And that's a shark that's flat. No, yeah, Carpic shark is what some people called it, but it's a tasseled Wobbegong.

Speaker 1 (41:20)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:27)
is one of the types we get here. They lay very flat and generally they'll be in like a cave and they'll arc their tail over and they'll start flapping their tail slowly back and forth in this cave so that when little fish swim by, they're like, look, there's a fish in there. That must be a good cave to hang out in. As they swim across, they're swimming across the top of the shark's mouth and while they're swimming toward the shark's head, he can eat them. And then the next fish comes by and goes, hey, didn't Steve go in that cave?

Speaker 1 (41:51)
Wow.

Speaker 2 (41:56)
Let's go see if he's in there. Then they go in, next one goes, and then this guy. And they'll stay in the same spot for months, just doing this over and over and over again. If you go diving at a place called Steve's Bombing on Ribbon 3, the crew will come in and they have like four different spots, but they're like, he's in one of these, the Wabi Gong's in one of these spots. Cause he's always in one of those spots, cause he's always catching fish in those areas.

So that's some of the sharks you'll see. Other sharks we do have this time of year, whale sharks come into the Marine Park. In fact, there's an expedition right now tagging them up in a place called Princess Charlotte Bay. So we believe that we do have ⁓ a special area where whale sharks come every single year to feed on the coral spawning. This is their, I think, fifth year doing it, tagging sharks. And I saw their first day expedition, they'd already tagged six whale sharks up there. So it seems like a really good hotspot.

So that's going to be new science coming out of the Great Barrier Reef in the next coming years is that we have some secret whale shark aggregation. Silver-tipped sharks, mako sharks, oceanic white-tipped sharks have been seen on the edges of the Marine Park. Hammerheads, scallop, great, tigers, bulls, ⁓ you name it. I think it's 134 species of sharks that we do get into the Marine Park, sharks and rays.

Speaker 1 (43:12)
I

think Miles is not going to be booking a trip now. just...

Speaker 2 (43:15)
Now,

my love it. Yeah, it's hate the sharks. ⁓

Speaker 1 (43:20)
Mostly just a few homeless ones though. That's the moral of the And have you ever called a shark the man in the gray suit? Because Aussies have lot of funny names for things.

Speaker 2 (43:24)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, the tax man. Mostly if you're fishing, it's the tax man. If you come up and you've caught a half a fish, you're like, well, I had a paid tax man. He gets his piece. He always gets his piece. And it's usually more than 34%, which is pretty much where the ATO comes in in terms of taxes as well. They take a very good percentage. The tax man, the man in the gray suit, depending on the color shark that you're, yeah, you always got to pay the piper on the ocean.

Speaker 1 (43:50)
that

I had a thought that when I heard man in a gray suit, remember thinking like if two surfers are sitting out there bobbing and one saw a shark, by the time he said, it'd be like, too late.

Speaker 2 (44:07)
because it's in the gray suit. And

for a country that shortens every word, know, for efficiency, you know, it's a very weird they would drag that one out. That's why I like the tax man like tax man coming. Yeah. Then you both

Speaker 1 (44:22)
⁓

Hey, I've taken so much of your time. Thank you very much for this. Before you go, I want to just let you share what's the new boat you're on, new business, how can people follow you because you post some really cool stuff on social media. ⁓ Not too many people have access to.

Speaker 2 (44:40)
No, so our new boat is called Pure Snorkeling Adventures. So it's got the logo there. And you can find us on Pure Snorkeling on Instagram. You'll see all of the cool shenanigans that we got up to out on our amazing sites. We have a very rare ability that we have multiple sites. So we've got our two owners have purchased all these different moorings because we only use moorings. Nobody anchors in the Great Barrier Reef unless you're a jerk.

There's so many moorings available. Use those or if you're in sandy areas, okay. But we have 15 different moorings over eight different reefs that span, I think I calculate 54 kilometers of coastline that we can cover. Some of the reefs that we go to, nobody else goes to it all. So we will be the only boat on an entire reef, which leaving a huge place like Cairns, usually you're one of three, four, five boats.

across a very large reef. Some of our reefs will just be us. And some of them are really, really small. All of them are just absolutely stunning. Many of them have been dormant for six years because the owner who used to own them passed away. So his company hasn't been operating. And a lot of people say,

Leave them alone. Well, we're snorkeling, so we're non-invasive. We're eco-certified and sustainable boat. So when we get out there, we're not only just snorkeling for recreation, but we're also doing surveys for the Great Barrier Marine Park. So we do weekly surveys and rapid health indicator surveys. So we're monitoring what's happening on the reef in real time. And if there's something we can do to intervene to help protect the reef,

things like a crown of thorns outbreak. If we start seeing lots of these starfish that eat live coral and they can get to plague plague proportions where they will decimate entire reef systems. If we start seeing a large quantity of them, we call in a team from the Marine Park. So they'll come in and they'll eradicate all of them. So they just inject them basically with vinegar and that vinegar they'll blow up and die and then all the fish will come along and eat them when they're no longer.

Speaker 1 (46:39)
So

you guys play quite a role in all monitoring basically

Speaker 2 (46:43)
We do. We are the eyes on the reef. And that's a really important part of our jobs as a tourism company. We're not just tourism companies extorting money from people. We're actually out there utilizing. Everybody pays a Marine Park fee and that Marine Park fee pays for the management of the Marine Park to keep it healthy, to protect it, to monitor it. And the one thing you can do to prevent problems on the Great Barrier Reef is circumvent before they even become an issue.

Just by moving around and having our presence as a tourism boat, we can keep illegal fishing and people who are doing the wrong thing and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We keep them at bay as well because they never know where we're going to show up.

Speaker 1 (47:22)
So, you follow the boat, the on social media. And then yours as well, which is club. With some underscores in between. like it. Here. And so what you do, but your Instagram is really cool. You do some cool stuff. It's not just from, from Australia either. You, as you said, you've been all over the place. So.

Speaker 2 (47:31)
Yeah, I love fish.

Yeah, so recently Fiji, so you'll see a lot of stuff about Fiji there and I think that it's just so dynamic, Fiji as well. And I just love the culture there. They're wonderful human beings. They're so happy and they just, they're still so in tune with their environment there. And everybody at the resort we're working at, they're all like from the local village. So their dads and grandfathers founded these dive sites and these are the kids that are just so cool.

Speaker 1 (48:09)
Thank you. It's really, it's fun to talk to someone who's so passionate about what they do and like kind of live in your, live in your dream and a dream location. I can hear the birds chirping in the background spring, bring me back to that tropical beer of that area. It was a good, great experience. have to go back. So now I know something else there.

Speaker 2 (48:28)
Yeah, come on up here snorkeling, see all of our cool sites.

Speaker 1 (48:32)
No

bull sharks. ⁓

Speaker 2 (48:34)
We

won't see any of that. I won't take any of those places.

Speaker 1 (48:37)
No, appreciate that. But thank you, I really appreciate the time. was fun talking with you and yeah, I'll follow you on social media. I look forward to seeing what you get up to on the new boat, it's cool. Yeah. All right, a huge thanks to Michelle Barry for spending a bit of time with me here. I think you can tell she likes her job, just a little bit. As I told you in the opening, she's really passionate.

Speaker 2 (48:51)
Thank you. ⁓

Speaker 1 (49:04)
about spending a lot of her life underwater, but she gets to do what she loves in one of the premier places on the planet to do it. I have to say again, the Great Barrier Reef is a special, special place to visit. Word of advice, again, if you go there, watch out for the backpacker bars, watch out for the Bundaberg rum. Just trust me on that. You can read all about it in my book if you wanna hear those tales. Thanks again for listening. If you like what you heard, please subscribe, share it.

Share this episode with people who are fond of traveling, maybe even people who are thinking about a trip to Australia, and certainly anyone who's got scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef on their bucket list. Thank you again for listening. I'll be back with another episode quite soon. Take care.