Alive underwater: Meet Johnny Gaskell

If there are only 24 hours in a day, Johnny Gaskell might just have the secret to squeezing the juice out of every single second.

By trade he’s a marine biologist, but the former Master Reef Guide has tried on many hats in his career. A published author, photographer, music composer, app developer, divemaster, shark and ray researcher and qualified teacher; it would be easier to tell you what he’s not, rather than what he is.

But there are two unassuming objects that started it all: a humble one-megapixel digital camera, and a jar of water bugs.

Johnny Gaskell grew up on a farm landlocked in Bendigo, central Victoria. The closest beach was a three-hour car journey.

“It all started when I was about four or five and we had a pond on our farm. We’d get a lot of insect larvae in the pond – I became obsessed with the pond and all the little bugs in it.

“I used to capture them and collect them and put them in a container and stare at them for days and days. I started to get really interested in aquatic animals.

“I started to spend a lot of time down in the creek near the farm, searching for these different aquatic animals. Then I found the ocean – this massive pond that just seemed endless,” Johnny Gaskell said.

Johnny’s first visit to the Great Barrier Reef was when he was 15, and since then, he’s been overwhelmed with possibility.

Today, as a Project Manager with the Reef Authority, working closely with tour guides, Johnny is in the water, exploring the Reef as often as possible.

“When you’re in a pond you can really focus on one animal. But when you jump in the Reef, it is almost overwhelming with all the corals, fish, all the different shapes and colours.

“It’s like a sensory overload.”

Johnny soon turned to underwater photography as a way of further learning about life below the surface.

“Photos can kind of create your own visual memory that you can then go away and learn so much more from.

“In the last 20 years I can count maybe five snorkels where I didn’t have my camera.

“It was during my second year of university when I bought my first underwater camera…it was one of the first digital cameras you could take underwater.

“I started to take photos of the animals and that was when I realised that was the best way to learn about the ocean.”

Banding together with two university mates, Johnny self-published a visual encyclopedia of marine animals from his time snorkelling Port Phillip, near Melbourne.

“It came about because we used to like taking photos and showing it to our relatives - things like seahorses, sea dragons and cuttlefish.

“We thought, no one seems to know about all these unique animals living on the doorstep of Melbourne – we should make a book.

“After that I kind of had this personal mission to take a photo of every single marine animal in Australia. I now realise it was an outrageous mission because it’s a lot harder than just swimming around in rockpools,” Johnny laughed.

“I moved to Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia and started snapping photos of all the megafauna they have there.

“The last spot was meant to be the Great Barrier Reef.”

After being satisfied with his exploration of the west-coast, Johnny made the move to Daydream Island to work as manager of the island’s free-form coral lagoon. While there, he also helped establish the on-island coral restoration facility.

“While working on Daydream, I was getting in the water as much as I could.

“It kind of becomes your underwater home when you spend so much time in the water in one location.

“And then along came cyclone Debbie.”

Severe Tropical Cyclone Debbie hit the Whitsunday region as a category 4 storm in 2017, with winds topping 260 kilometres per hour, causing extensive damage above and below the surface.

“Cyclone Debbie sent a few of us into a really dark place.

“When you live on the island you feel like you live in a part of that ecosystem, and when it disappears overnight, you feel lost.

“Cyclone Debbie really impacted me because the sites I’d been exploring around the island went from 80–90 per cent coral cover to basically zero coral cover.

“This sparked a search for coral havens or areas that were not impacted by the cyclone.

“I got a bit obsessive and hooked on this idea and spent the last six years trying to find the perfect reef… a place with high diversity that could better withstand disturbances.”

Inspired through his passion project, the then reef manager at Daydream Island Resort applied to be a Master Reef Guide with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

“I became really interested in understanding the science – understanding the reefs at site level.

“The Eye on the Reef program and the site stewardship framework are two things I am really interested in because there’s no other set of programs that allow people to understand a site at that intricate level.

“And working with tourism operators, who visit the Reef every day who are equally as passionate about the Reef and their sites is why I wanted to work with this team at the Reef Authority.

“My job is to work closely with the tourism industry in ensuring they’re using best practice to protect their site.

“It’s important because these are the people that are out there every day and they’re the ones who notice those small changes in the environment.

“Taking the data they provide and processing it for a higher level of understanding is just such a great collaboration to be a part of.”

Reflecting on his diverse career journey, his advice to students is to sample a bit of it all.

“Our industry is so broad, and you could land anywhere in any type of job, but while you’re young, try out lots of different avenues your career could go, because you have plenty of time to settle into a job that you want to pursue.”

Check out some of Johnny's photography below.