Meet the Adventurers

SPEAKER_01 0:36

This whale was completely tangled around it, its tail was caught, it had net completely around its head, all the way around. So just knowing that these nets are there for the purpose of catching indiscriminately, really, they're catching turtles, rays, dolphins, random fish, penguins in some cases, it's just madness really.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

We live in a natural world that we're surrounded by animals that can be dangerous at times. And the reason that we go for these adventures and hikes and tails and paddles and whatever else is to be around them and to see them in their natural element.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

And there's like three-foot waves breaking through this bar for like hundreds of meters, and that's pretty stressful.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

When it's getting dark, the wheels go through like hundreds of halfway through the hull. So yeah, by the time we got 10 kilometers off the shore, we felt like we were thinking.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Plunge into the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef and explore the mysteries beneath the waves.

SPEAKER_04 1:46

In 2024, Brenton Owens and a group of neighbours risked legal action and fines of more than $30,000 when they paddleboarded out to rescue a humpback whale entangled in a shark net off the Sunshine Coast. Moved by that experience, Brenton recently kayaked more than 1,300 kilometers from the Gold Coast to Ellie Beach to document the impact of Queensland's shark control program on wildlife. And today he's here to tell us all about it. Brenton, welcome to Word on the Reef.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Hi, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

And also joining us is Kaelin Lockhart, an outdoor adventurer best known for appearing on the 2025 season of Australian Survivor, and Pyrrhic Martin, an environment and climate scientist. Kaelin and Pyrrhic each joined Brenton in the two-person kayak for part of the journey. Hey guys, welcome to Wet on the Reef. Hey, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_05 2:40

Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_04 2:41

It's great to have you on the show. To start off, can you tell us a bit about yourselves and how you each came to be passionate about environmental issues and outdoor adventures? Brenton, would you like to go first?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I grew up on a nature refuge and spent a good part of my early years revegetating and conservation on that uh the land there. Further on, went into university as an environmental scientist, graduated from that, and I've worked up on the Great Barrier Reef doing the Crown of Thorns control program. That's some of the diving work that I've done in the marine side of things.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

Awesome. And Kaelin, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Yeah, so I grew up on the Sunshine Coast, and I suppose the answer in two parts. The first would be uh love of adventure, and that that probably came from reading. So you have all the great adventure books like uh Thor Herodal in Kentucky Voyage, and uh so I always wanted to go on some big trips, and then the love for the environment just came from how special the Sunshine Coast is. So always being in the water, snorkeling, and uh and also just comparing that as a kid to camping in New South Wales, in north New South Wales, where it's still really vegetated and raw, and seeing the housing developments and everything go up on the Sunshine Coast, it kind of just uh yeah, it makes you want to preserve these these environments for now in the future.

SPEAKER_04 4:05

And Kaylin, I don't want to go off on a tangent too early, but I understand you're in Norway. Is that part of an outdoor adventure or not this time in the past it was last year?

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Me and Brenton uh skied uh most of the length of Norway. Uh that's how we met, and that's how I got involved in in this upcoming trip because of his passion and uh seeing how capable he is. But now I came over for a conference, Antarctic conference, uh, because my PhD's on mapping vegetation to hopefully establish new protected areas in Antarctica. So it's more of the yeah, computer work this time, but uh hopefully for a positive impact.

SPEAKER_04 4:44

Wow, that's really interesting. I bet we could do a whole separate episode on Antarctica. But Pierre, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah, so I suppose I've I've moved a lot growing up and I think I've always been quite sensitive to the beauty of of the world in general. And then more as an adult I started hiking and and kayaking and doing different things. And I think uh loving uh nature has brought me to doing some of these adventures, but it's also uh led me to uh doing the studies that I did. So I did environmental science like printing and then I've achieved that into a master's of amateur adaptation. And did my research in Fiji looking at the impact of sea level fluctuations primarily on remote island nations and I feel like wherever I am, there's just beauty everywhere. So it's worth preserving it as much as we can.

SPEAKER_04 5:39

Wow, that would have been really eye-opening. Maybe we'll have to get you back for a separate episode. We can talk about sea level as well, because it's a big issue even for the Torres Strait Islanders here in Queensland. But

The Whale Rescue

SPEAKER_04 5:52

today we're here to talk about the shark control program in Queensland. So, Brenton, let's go back to that day when you rescued a whale. It sounds like it was quite a dramatic day. Can you walk us through from the beginning what happened that day?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Um yeah, well, I used to live right across from the beach, and uh every day I go down for a swim and went to do that, and I I looked out to the ocean, I could see the shark nets, and there just seemed to be something in there. And I thought, oh, some debris or something called in there, spent a little bit longer looking at it, I could hear it. A loud, distressed noise, and the yeah, a big creature just came to the surface, and I was like, oh no, it's a whale. And yeah, sure enough, it was uh a whale just struggling to get to the surface, and you could actually hear it from the beach. And so I was uh I saw uh another guy up on the beach and he just arrived with a paddleboard and he had a knife in his hand. I said, Oh, you you you going out there and I I I don't think you can actually go and like tamper with the equipment. And he said, Oh really? I'd I don't know, let's just see if there's something I can do. And I said, Yeah, fair enough. I'll go and grab my paddle board as well and a knife and mask and let's go see what we can do. Uh on the way back, I called the hotline and they said, Oh yeah, we'll get someone up there within a couple of hours. I just thought, oh, that's that's far too long. So yeah, went out there and got over to the whale. It was uh bellowing this incredible distress sound that just sits sits deep in me now. One of the girls there, she's just in tears, distraught at the situation. And I just thought, I've got all this experience in the water, thousands of hours diving and surfing, you name it. So I yeah, put my mask on and gently approached, slid off my paddle board and had a look what was the situation underwater and from quite a distance, and this whale was completely tangled around it, its tail was caught, it had net completely around its head, all the way around. Um yeah, so I I did a a full survey of yeah, what the situation was and I I identified that the the net was rubbing back and forth over its eyes, and the the whale eyes are quite bulged. So I thought, oh, if I can let this thing see comfortably, hopefully it's gonna relax. Um so that was the first thing, just gently approached, made sure it knew I was there, and just connected with it first, and then slowly just yeah, picked away some some of the net off its eye. And instantly you could see that once that was gone on both eyes, it just relaxed and all the tension off the net pulled back. And then I thought, oh yes, yeah, this good success here, we can start working around what's happening. And then I just noticed that there was one of the weights that uh holds the net down. It was just tangled around one of the the other parts of the net. So I managed to free dive down about six meters, lift it up and around and unwrap it essentially, and then just cut a few more lines off it and uh yeah, it gave it one big kick and away it went in a big well up of water, and this other guy I'd never met before, and half an hour ago, he was helping me keep it free. Oh, and before it swam free, you could see that it was just it was so aware of its situation and that new net was in front of it. It it just gently rolled on its one side and then turned away from it as if it banked away from the the hazard and off it went.

SPEAKER_04 9:26

Wow. My eyes are welling up with tears, that's such a tale. You must have felt pretty emotional in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah, I did, but also I just knowing that these nets are there for the purpose of catching indiscriminately, really. Uh I mean they're there to catch sharks, but we all know that they catch whales every year, and whales are the big ones that people care about, but they're catching turtles, rays, dolphins, random fish, penguins in some cases. It's just madness, really. Um so that yeah, we're both just all in the water just thinking, oh what like yeah, this is a moment of joy, but we did this to that. And we just felt mixed emotions of we really need to speak up about this and getting to shore, then we found out that there was about thirty thousand dollars of fines for being within twenty meters of the net. Uh then we're mixed with like, do we go to the media? Do we tell that we were the ones that did this and tell our story at risk of thirty thousand dollars each? But yeah, we decided we have to. Like this this is part of the story of these nets being in the the ocean that we do this, and we need to advocate to get them out.

SPEAKER_04 10:45

Wow, so what consequences did you end up experiencing after freeing the whale?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

So yeah, we we did an article with ABC, which was is great to tell our story and the whale's story. But then you'd two weeks later had two fisheries uh officers knock on my door and start questioning me about what happened, and then they end up sending us a notice, uh a warning notice for being within that exclusion zone. It just seems like there's a lack of humanity within their assessment of what happened, and you know, we're there as first aiders essentially. I think that's a humane thing to do is if you're able and capable of doing it, you should try to do something until help arrives, but help never arrived for them apart from us.

SPEAKER_04 11:33

Well, they said someone was would be there in a couple of hours. Did they eventually get there, or did you cancel the call out, or they just didn't come?

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Uh no one ever showed up. Uh apparently the Surf Life Saving Club reported that it had been released by us, and so they just cancelled it, I think. But no one ever came to try and track that whale to identify that it was okay. They just left it.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

Yeah. If I was in the same position, I would have wanted to help the whale as well. But if someone who wasn't an experienced surfer and freediver like you tried to do something, they could also get hurt. So it's it's really tough. But I guess the takeaway message is no whales or humans would be in danger if we didn't have these nets in the first place. So

Shark Nets And Drum Lines Explained

SPEAKER_04 12:22

that brings us to your campaign. So for any listeners who aren't familiar, what are the shark control devices that are used in Queensland and how do they work?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah, so there's a number of devices there. We've got the nets, which are between 120 to 180 meters thereabouts. They just sit out in the ocean an arbitrary distance, maybe 300 metres from the shore, and they run six metres deep from the surface, down six metres, and usually sitting in about 15 metres of water. Then we have the drum lines, which are a baited hook. Nothing more to it. It's not technical, it's a 1960s technology. They have now started to do some catch-alert drum lines, which alert when they are uh caught something. Uh, I believe they mostly use those in the Great Bay Reef uh marine parks. So down the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, they're just a drumline without any so that an animal just sit there and no one knows about it. And then we have drones to come in, which are great. That's uh an active method of control and identification of sharks being in the zone.

SPEAKER_04 13:31

What's that? Did you say drones?

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Drones, yeah. So that's they're the ones that everyone's advocating to use, and uh there's been a lot of traction in New South Wales recently. So hopefully Queensland's catching up with it. There's also research receivers that are in the water. So some of the sharks they do tag them and release them, mostly when they're in a marine park zone when they're designed to then tell more or less the lifesavers if there's some sharks in the zone, and then they can act accordingly and close the beach. It also gives those that are researching the movements of sharks to notify them that a a shark has been in the in that area.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

What are the impacts of these current shark control devices that are used in Queensland?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

So, yeah, one of the biggest issues with the nets and drum lines is the bycatch. So, yeah, as I mentioned before, there's turtles, dolphins, whales, rays, some of the main ones. Also a number of uh shark species. There's about a hundred shark species, but there's only five or seven in Queensland that they're actually targeting. So all these animals get caught indiscriminately in the nets and the drum lines throughout the year. These devices are in there for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Last year alone was probably the largest of the bycatch, where they caught uh there's 3,630 animals in this equipment. That's across the Queensland coastline. That's 121% increase from 2024. So 13 humpback whales, 18 dolphins, 17 of them found dead, 47 turtles, 14 rays, two jugons, 15 grey nurse sharks. Most of these are all endangered species.

SPEAKER_04 15:12

Critically endangered, I think the grey nurses might be. And so that increase 120%, does that sort of coincide with the government increasing their program of shark control?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, I mean, open speculation, but yeah, most likely having the hooks baited almost daily now opposed to what was maybe days between. Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna get more catch.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

Do you believe these shark control devices help protect swimmers?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

It's a bit of a controversial topic amongst the community. I mean, a lot of the politicians will give you spun stories. I personally don't think they do. The statistics and the science out there, it doesn't demonstrate that they do protect swimmers. Sure, maybe they're removing the numbers, but also you've got to remember these apex species, keystone species, removing them out of a habitat can be really detrimental to fish life and the habitat and ecosystem as a whole. Where they're located, and you've got to think about you know, they're baited hooks that are sitting two, three hundred meters away from the shore. Is it keeping sharks away? Is it bringing them in?

SPEAKER_04 16:25

Yeah, the nets obviously don't surround the whole swimming area. Sharks can swim around them or under them. So it doesn't seem like it would make that much of a difference for swimmers. And I noticed one of the statistics that you cited on your campaign as well was that the majority of sharks spotted by drones were already inside the nets or drum lines. So the drum lines and nets didn't stop them, they just went around them. They were already inside, like on the swimmer side of the beach when the drones spotted them. So drones are giving us better information by the sounds of it than what are getting caught in those nets.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Is that kind of what you believe? I think that's the outcome of the drone trial, the report that the government released. They showed they are more effective. And this is only drones operating on the weekends and public holidays.

Kayaking for Humane Shark Control

SPEAKER_04 17:16

So what inspired the kayaking trip and what was the aim of it?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Obviously, yeah, freeing this whale is I I just felt like I had to do something. I had to keep that story going. And I needed to do something, something big. And I thought, what better thing to do than a trip the whole way up past all 410 drum lines and nets in the water from Gold Coast border up to Cairns. And I'd previously done a big trip with Kalen last year through Norway, so he was the perfect candidate to poach and hopefully he wanted to join. And then uh yeah, had Pierek as well, who I've spent many a times out exploring the world and nature, and one of the other few other people that would actually be up to such a trip. So thankfully both of them said, Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_04 18:06

Awesome. So did you have much kayaking experience beforehand?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Um, I I've done lots of sports, they all transfer skills. I've done a lot of sailing before, a little bit of kaiking, nothing of big trips. So this was yeah, a little bit more adventurous uh in the open water and sea kayaking. We did have a boat that had a sail, and the idea was to mostly sail with the trade winds all the way up the coast. So it didn't really involve too much training. Uh most of it was just planning and making sure there was distances that we could cover each day and uh which we largely overestimated how far we could go, but we pulled into some campsites at night time.

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

But that's all all part of it.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

Wow. So I don't know anything about kayaking, but I've seen your social media. It's well, I think it is bigger than any kayak I've ever been in. It's obviously a two-person kayak. Does it have outrigger parts?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Yes, it's a kayak with outriggers, two outriggers on either side for trimaran.

SPEAKER_04 19:07

So that adds you a bit more stability and you had a sail, so you didn't have to paddle the whole way.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Not the whole way. Yeah, it's got a pedal drive instead of paddles. So it's kind of like riding a bike on water when we actually needed to go under our own power rather than the wind.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

Wait, so you didn't have hand paddles?

SPEAKER_01 19:27

We did. We'd only really use the hand paddles if we're coming into shore. Um, but the pedal drives are really efficient to get along as your legs are a lot more stronger than your your arms and your back.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

We could yeah, more or less keep paddling for hours. Yeah, some days, probably go for like five or six hours at a time, just keep going together and pause as we need to. There's two of us on the boat and keep moving.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

Wow. Okay, so Kaelin and Pyrrhic, this is where you come into the story. Who was the first that joined Brenton on the kayaking journey?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

I was the first, yeah. I started in the Tweed River, so right across from uh Queensland and New South Wales, and then the first tint was basically five days, I believe, all the way to uh to Newtah with a little a little stop in Kawana. Or a couple of days because the wind just disappeared altogether. So we had one day, we basically sailed back from Morton, actually Minjariba, it was uh south North Straddy, and then we got to a couple of cases south of uh Ribey Island, and then the winds just stopped altogether. And then we were on the paddle drives for about eight hours after that until we got to Kiwanna, and then we're like maybe we should just stop at some point under a full moon and a glass off night.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

It was gorgeous. It was beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 20:57

That actually sounds really nice. I mean, there's obviously a drawback of having no wind in your sails, but yeah, a glass out on the ocean can be pretty nice.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

It was stunning. It really was. I I have no regrets about this one, definitely not.

SPEAKER_04 21:11

So you were there for five days, period?

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Five days for this one, I believe that's how long it took us, yeah. And then Caitlin took over for the next three and a half weeks or something like that, I think. And then I finished the the journey as well. So the last bit was from Mackay to Ellie Beach. Caelan uh had to stop, had to he had business to attend to, so then uh I took over to finish the journey. So I did the first week and the last week basically, and then Calen did everything in between.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Branton, you did the whole thing. How long did the whole thing take and how far did you go?

SPEAKER_01 21:45

So we traveled 1,300 kilometres from Gold Coast border to Airly Beach before I ran out of time, unfortunately. The goal was obviously cans to go past all of the equipment, but we did end up going past 291 drum lines and 27 nets. The aim was 410 in total, but yeah, we got over 310.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

Still a very impressive effort. Were your legs hurting after that?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

It was pretty relaxing, actually.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

Yeah, I mean you're sitting down the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Oddly, we would pedal when we actually needed to do something. Felt like we're getting itchy.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Or to keep warm. To keep warm, because the when we first started, the first couple of weeks basically were like really strong westerlies, and these were cold winds. So we were on. The paddles a lot.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

Yeah, so when did you leave? How long did the whole thing take, Brenton? And when did you arrive in Early?

SPEAKER_01 22:45

We left on the 30th of May, and uh it was about six or so weeks uh until we got to Ellie Beach. Uh so I think it was about the 8th or 10th of July is when we ended up stopping.

SPEAKER_04 22:59

Yeah, so it was a good time to go in terms of we normally have strong southeasterly winds, right? But did you say it was coming westerly? Because that's different to the direction that you want to go in.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

We had pretty unseasonable westerlies, and then we had a few northerlies as well, and that's why we had to stop in Kiwana. That's not helpful. We got delayed quite a bit leaving Gold Coast uh because they had about four and a half metres of swell and northerly winds. So it was just very rough. So that's kind of what delayed the larger part of the trip. But it was also timed to coincide with the whale migration, keeping with the theme of freeing the whale. Thought, all right, what do all these whales go past on their way north?

SPEAKER_04 23:41

Awesome. Did you have any whale buddies like accompanying you on the journey?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah, we did have a few. Not as many as we thought. I think they're mostly offshore on their way north, but there was definitely a few sightings, particularly around Double Island Point, and uh once we got into Harvey Bay.

SPEAKER_04 23:59

Nice. So Pyrrhic was there for the first week and the last week, and Kaylin, how did you get involved in this journey?

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Well, yeah, as as we've been saying, I skied in with Brenton in Norway, so we were a super good team. We never had an argument or anything. So when Brenton suggested a new adventure, it was just a matter of time. So I was probably too ambitious saying I'd do the whole thing initially, because uh I hadn't asked my supervisor about the time off. And then the conversations with him led to Pierre saving the day to slot in. And so yeah, he's the real hero here because the the craft is it's big, it's massive. So one person can't drag it up the beach, it's incredibly heavy. You have little wheels that you can drag it up, but uh to do that whole trip would have been impossible for Brenton to do alone. And then the motivation, aside from just adventure, was I got pretty fired up about the nets and the drum lines. I hadn't really thought about it before, which is surprising being in the beach so much. But when Brenton triggered that thinking, you just look at the lack of logic involved, and if it was actually yeah, a logical approach to protecting swimmers, if there was some kind of enclosure, then you could understand. But you know, if something's damaging marine life and it is not proven to work and the logic's not there, then uh yeah, you get pretty fired up about that. So very happy to to join the adventure.

SPEAKER_04 25:25

So uh did you camp on this six-week trip or did you stay in hotels and eat at McDonald's?

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Uh we were we were camping every night. The boat's as big as it is, it's not big enough to sleep on. So we just dragged it up the beach, uh set up the tents, and then cooked our dinners and then watched the sunset.

Rescuing A Turtle

SPEAKER_04 25:47

So what was the most startling discovery you made while checking all these drum lines?

SPEAKER_01 25:53

It was about day six when we pulled into uh Rainbow Beach right on sunset. We'd gone past oh, probably over a hundred drum lines at this point, and very hard to see what's in them because you've got that exclusion zone and you can pass through them very quickly, but as long as it's not stopping. But we got to this one at Rainbow Beach and something is pulling down on it. And we're like, oh no, there's not good. There's actually something in this. Hadn't really thought much about what we'd do if we saw one. So jumped on the hotline and gave them a call, and there was this what happened to be a loggerhead that was probably one of the biggest ones we'd seen. Done a lot of diving, but this thing was massive.

SPEAKER_04 26:33

Yeah, so for any listeners who aren't aware, we're talking about one of the rarest species of sea turtles and also one of the biggest they can grow, I think. They're very special, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah. Um, so yeah, it was pulling down on the drum line and trying to get away, but it had the hook somewhere. So we ended up doing lots of passes back and forth in and out of the exclusion zone, trying to keep you know within the the law, and yeah, managed to get some footage of it with a hook underneath its neck, and you could actually hear it you know, grunting or in distress underwater.

SPEAKER_04 27:07

That's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

And the worst part was when we called the hotline, they said, Oh, someone will come in the morning. No one's gonna come out now. It's already too late, they've got their workhouse and safety, they couldn't come out.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

That's sad. Did the turtle go for the bait actually? Is that what they do with those drum lines, or it just swam past and got stuck?

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah, I I think it went for the bait and must just have a nibble on it, and then it's got caught. Apparently, talking to someone at SeaWorld, that's fairly common with the turtles. He did reassure us over the phone that they are generally pretty good success rate to survive through the night and that they'll just settle overnight and someone was coming in the morning and got word in the morning that it was a successful release. So we're glad that we could be there to notify them and get it help as soon as possible.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

Well, thank goodness that sounds like a happy ending that it got released successfully, but it still illustrates how dangerous the nets and drum lines are because that would have been a long night for that turtle. Yeah.

Surviving at Sea

SPEAKER_04 28:11

So what were some of the highlights of the trip?

SPEAKER_00 28:14

I feel like we probably have a lot of the same ones. Like the mornings and the evenings just watching the sunrise and the and the sunset, or nice days when the wind is pulling you forward and everything just seems so smooth and beautiful around you. The one that sticks out to me is actually probably not the best. We caught this enormous fish, and it cut my hands, and it was just way too big for us to bring back in, and eventually it just kind of snapped off and went back to to his little thing. But we had some good laughs with Branton about this. I definitely did. He probably didn't.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

I went hungry that night.

SPEAKER_04 28:55

Did you manage to catch most of your dinners yourself?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Not most. We didn't we didn't really count for catching fish, but once we got up into the islands around uh Macai and or just off anywhere north of Yapoon, sometimes we'd go spear fishing, or you know, we managed to catch one fish on the line, other times we'd spear and catch a few.

unknown 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

I don't think we caught any more than 10 in the whole trip, really.

SPEAKER_04 29:19

Trying to catch fish the old-fashioned way without the fancy sounders and equipment that people have. It must be tricky nowadays because there's less fish out there.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Yeah, definitely. We're trolling for three weeks without catching a fish. As you said, it's not so easy without the sounders. And then just before I was about to end in Mackay, probably 100 metres from the beach, we finally got a mackerel. So that was delicious on the barbecue. And part of why Pierre had such a highlight of his fish. I mean, Brenton was screaming at the the video he got, just pull it in. But uh no. And then the other highlights is more on the the mission. So we got to talk to a lot of sailors along the way, uh, especially on Middle Percy Island, and uh hearing their array of opinions on the topic was interesting, and also the ability to see yeah, how open their minds were. So once myself, Brenton, I'm sure Pierre as well talked to them about maybe the lack of logic, then people who were adamantly for shark nets, shark hooks, yeah, could be swayed to to maybe not seeing them as the best methods in contrast to drones or whatever. And we also had some great adventures too. So Brenton mentioned coming in at night time, some of the landings, and uh you'd look on the on Google Maps and see, well, that's a fantastic bar. We're gonna head into that river and we'll be able to land easy. Uh, but with the shifting sands, we came to just a spot just south of Agnes waters. We got there just as the sun was setting, and there was like three foot waves breaking through this bar for like hundreds of meters, and uh but that's pretty stressful when it's getting dark, and we could always swim in, but you're gonna lose the craft if you capsize. And uh, we were just lucky to find a little narrow entry we could make, but we'll sprinting for our lives to not get hit by these waves that would uh made a very uncomfortable evening.

SPEAKER_04 31:15

Sounds dicey. I don't know if that's a highlight or a low light, but at least you made it.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

Yeah, definitely exciting.

SPEAKER_04 31:22

Were there any other moments where uh you felt in danger? Like there's also crocodiles in Queensland, there's various dangers.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Well, Brenton can talk to this, but uh the uh initial seaworthiness of the craft was sometimes an issue.

SPEAKER_04 31:39

Wait, would you get it off Facebook Marketplace or something, did you?

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Oh yeah. Yeah. When I first got the the kayak and took it for its first trial, came back and found out there was a bit of a hole in it. So I had to fix that. But that was actually perfect because it gave me the skills to fix a hole in this boat when I was actually more remote. So you got another hole and we're about 10 kilometers from shore. We accidentally, yeah, setting off in the morning the wheels that go through, they punched part way through the hole. Oh no. And we didn't realise because we couldn't feel it, it was higher up in there. So yeah, by the time we got 10 kilometres offshore, we felt like we were sinking. Fortunately, and this is probably you know a good highlight and just one of the synchronicities of doing these kind of adventures is yeah, we aimed for the nearest little township, and once we got ashore, we found energyx guys that had some silicon that we could use to seal it, and there was some eroded bank which had some water pipe, and that's what we used to sort of strengthen it on the outside.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

Wow. So you scavenged materials.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:49

That's proper survivor stuff.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

We do have an expert in the house, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:59

Wow. So any other dangers or lowlights?

SPEAKER_00 33:04

There's something interesting about going on adventures, and then the lowlights eventually kind of become the highlights. It's kind of you don't really know what's good or bad, it's all just part of the adventure, the story, and it's it's neither good nor bad, it's just memorable. And there was definitely a moment, it would have been like day two or day three. We were crossing Morton Bay, and then I realized at one point that he was sitting quite low in the water, and uh someone forgot to put the bone back in.

SPEAKER_04 33:41

Rookie mistake.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

It may or may not have been me. I don't know. The story won't tell. But we ended up stopping in the very last kind of sandbar because a lot of the morton base is somewhat shallow, so there's a lot of sandbars everywhere, which is also why you've got all of these sea grass, which then feeds the dugongs and all that. But anyway, so we were on the very last bar before we get into the really deep section. And we we stopped there, and it was luckily enough, it was really shallow. So it was only about a little bung with with like a bit of rope and a wrap-up from a musley bar or something like that, and then that lasted the rest of the trip. Well, the rest of the next two days. And then we obviously found another one once we we had access to shops again. But yeah, that was fun.

SPEAKER_04 34:33

Good MacGyvering.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

Pierc wasn't alone in uh well, potentially Pierre wasn't alone in losing the bung. Uh I did the same thing. I was out solo, and then I got so much water on that the kayak was putting the nose in the air while I was trying to get back in. But yeah, there was a lot of urgent uh bailing to try and get in, and Brenton just was on the beach, seeing me sail back and forth thinking it's taking quite a long time to get in. I was like, Oh my god, I've sunk the kayak. But uh some guys found the bung on the beach the next day, and uh Pierre brought a hundred spares with him when he came to join. So that's a good lesson. More spares.

SPEAKER_04 35:13

Good takeaway message bring spare bungs, okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

We made a rule, only I touched the bung.

SPEAKER_04 35:22

So,

What Not to Do on a Kayak Adventure

SPEAKER_04 35:23

any other highlights of the trip?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

My highlight was watching these two at the front of the boat getting splashed every day. Getting cold. So were you sitting in the sunshine? Were you at the back the whole time, Brenton? Not the whole time, but yeah. Is there a big place in the front? He was happy with that, felt comfortable enough.

SPEAKER_04 35:42

Is there a big difference between the two positions? Like one's the steerer or one's the captain or whatever, or are they kind of both the same?

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Both seats have steering, but it's more the rear seat seem to have you know, in the direction we're going, more sunshine, and you didn't cop so much of the water splashing off the bow.

SPEAKER_05 36:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Alan seems very comfortable being there, but I offered to swap. He said, No, I got my spot. Yeah, got my groove in the seat. I swapped.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

I was happy to go in the back sometimes. Just like because when you're in the front seat, you're kind of like shaded by the sail. So it can get quite cold, especially if you keep getting splashed by the waves. So sometimes we'd like switch around. And it's kind of nice as well to to move around and then you can go on the the little trampoline and then stretch your legs, and it's kind of nice.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

Yeah, because obviously you wanted to go in winter because it's whale season and there's more southeasterly wind, but then you have to deal with being cold. So if it was me, I would have been shivering away. I would have been like, go kayaking, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Maybe you were thinking that in some moments.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Yeah. It was definitely cold. The uh a five mil wetsuit would have been better than a three mil. But the worst was I wore extra wool to try and keep warm, but then my bum just got like insanely itchy, like it would almost drive me insane. Like uh, you're losing your mind, and you could just sit and not move, and it was fine. But then Brenton says, Oh, we need you on the trampoline to do a little tack here or something, and then it just starts all over again. At night, you can't sleep, you can't sit, and then I learnt to take the wool off and just do some pedaling.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

I did not know about this.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Oh yeah, it was so bad. It drove me. I was actually losing my mind. I couldn't sit when we get in at night. I just have to stand up. The second you sit, it's just like needles going into your bum, and it was uh it was terrible.

SPEAKER_04 37:42

Good tip. Don't kayak with wool, okay. Yeah, so salty wool. Any other highlights of the trip?

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Brenty got a shark in his lap at Mackay. A wave broke over him, and then when the foam disappeared, there's little is it a lemon shark, Brenton?

SPEAKER_01 37:59

It was like a little lemon shark or something, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_04 38:01

Cute.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

Just in his lap when the waves to the pit.

SPEAKER_04 38:05

You're literally the shark whisperer. The sharks are just like coming to you. You're like, come to me, sharks.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Yeah, thank you, Brenton.

Fire and Paddling in the Yukon: Pierick's Story

SPEAKER_04 38:13

I feel like you each brought different experiences to the team. So, Pirik, I understand you have done a kayak race on the Yukon River. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Yeah, that was uh what was supposed to be a 715-kilometer hike that we were supposed to do in about three days.

SPEAKER_04 38:34

A kayak, you mean?

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Yeah, yeah. Sorry, a kayak, yeah, yeah. Well, it's uh it was actually on a canoe, but yeah, so on the water. And uh because of wildfires, we weren't actually able to finish the race. So we did the first section, which was about uh 300 and a bit 305 or something kilometers. So my mate uh Nathan and I did that in about just under 30 hours, 29 hours and 15 minutes or something. And then what should have been the midpoint we were supposed to stay there for 10 hours and then start again the next day again ended up being the the end. And yeah, Canada has been hit by monstrous wildfires as of late, and it's they keep getting uh more numerous and more intense, and it's becoming quite a problem. Uh Jasper, one of the mountains in the Canadian Rockies, was almost entirely devastated, uh uh erased off the maps. That was about four or five years ago by now. And so that was they were hit really hard. And if you go there now, there's still there's nothing around. They're having quite a few issues. But the race itself, other than the fires, it's a wonderful place to be. Uh it's a gorgeous area, and and there's a lot of good people there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:55

And you didn't have a sail, so you really did have to paddle, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:58

We really had to paddle for that one.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

Yeah, and instead of worrying about crocodiles, you were given instructions to look out for bears, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Yeah, you don't really find bears too often on the Queensland coast. Um drop bears. Yeah, maybe they're drop bears. But definitely over there, yeah, it's uh it's a thing. Wolves could also have been a problem. Moose, or mates, as I like to call them, um, are usually a big problem as well. They're they're much larger than we think. And at certain times of the year they can be quite aggressive as well. So yeah, there's there's a few dangers. But it's a I think it's a it's a beautiful reminder, just like in Queensland, that we live in a natural world that we're surrounded by animals that can be dangerous at times. And the reason that we go for these adventures and the hikes and sails and paddles and whatever else, is to be around them and to see them in their natural element. Yeah, there's there's a lot more to say about this.

SPEAKER_04 41:03

But yeah, I think there's a useful parallel. I mean, can you imagine if humans were putting up giant nets in the forest and it was not only killing all the bears and wolves, but also the moose and every other beautiful endangered animal? Surely there would be a big outrage about it.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 41:23

And

Lessons from Australian Survivor: Kaelan's Story

SPEAKER_04 41:23

and Kaelin, you've got an advantage for surviving in the wilderness. Was there anything that you learned from being on Australian Survivor that was useful for doing this kayaking trip, or were they completely unrelated?

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Uh yeah, so the discomfort was related. So the sleeping on the beach every night. Uh this was kind of a luxurious trip to have a tent and a mat. In the in Survivor, we're really just sleeping on the sand with storms and rain coming in each night. Wave once came over me to wake me up. Uh, it was pretty, it's much everyone goes, is it really what it was like, or do you stay in hotels? It's so much worse than it ever looks like. You're really starving.

SPEAKER_04 42:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Um, so there's a couple of things that really helped me, and that was one was just eating beans every day because I've come to find a little complex flavor in what people find quite simple. So we're just eating our cans of beans. I love them. It's actually one of my favorite diets. Um, the other thing would be you know, fire starting skills.

SPEAKER_04 42:23

That's that's that sounds like one of the risks of being in the back of the kayak.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Yeah, exactly. Maybe you help it go faster. Yeah, Brenton, uh yeah, he definitely was quite an orchestra by himself at points and times, but uh I don't know if that's exclusive to the trip. Um and uh yeah, we just did a lot of fire starting. Then when we got into the coconuts, uh I thought I was pretty good at coconut climbing and stuff like that, but Brenton really is he's probably one of the best in Australia, these massive coconut trees, and uh you'd think, oh no, we can't get up there, and then he was my real role model and just having a crack, and he'd climb up these monsters and just sit in the canopy pulling down these coconuts, and one of the highlights was he was up there yelling about something, and uh he came down just covered in these green ants, and he was like, Please help me pull them off. There was one on his eyelid, like I had to pull it off the top of his eyelid, and uh yeah, so I think Brenton is coconut king on on this one.

SPEAKER_04 43:31

Wow, uh skill you might not have known you had until you're hungry for coconut.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Yeah, I was kicking off a bunch of coconuts, and I think there was a nest of ants right in it, and they just swarmed on me.

SPEAKER_04 43:44

That'll happen.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

But I couldn't leave because there were so many coconuts. I had to get them off first.

SPEAKER_04 43:49

You really put yourself on the line there, you sacrificed for the the team. I think there's another parallel to draw because they say that you're statistically more people die from coconuts falling on them than from shark attacks. What

What Needs To Change Now

SPEAKER_04 44:03

did you learn from this trip?

SPEAKER_01 44:05

I think the most like eye-opening thing is just the sheer number of them all up the coast. I didn't know how many exactly, but when you actually plot them on the map, uh you see that it's it is a consistent line all the way up. And what was really interesting is just seeing the numbers and concentrations of them, like around North Strabrook Island, Mindrimba, I think it's got some like 30 drum lines that are just on that point lookout.

SPEAKER_04 44:31

That's pretty wild because it's a famous diving spot, you know, where people go to dive. With leopard sharks, which are harmless, but the nets don't mean that.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

How many nets or how many drum lines there are just there and just lined. I think it was it was some like three kilometres from the headland or maybe not quite that far, but yeah, it was just a continuous line all the way up getting to the headland. And I didn't realise that there was quite that many or that concentration there. And other places like Mackay, where there's not actually that many people that swim. And you can't swim in these places in summer either, because of the stingers and the crocs. You've got just a huge number, probably like 15 or so at each beach, and then two nets in front of that as well.

SPEAKER_04 45:21

Wow, it really makes you wonder how they decided where to put all of these. And and for a whale that has to swim up that whole way, they've got so many to dodge. I mean, imagine like they they managed to swim past the first one. Great, now you've only got 409 to go. That'd that'll make a really good educational video game. Like, see if you can steer the whale up the Great Barrier Reef without hitting the drumline.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

I think another one is like Monrepo, just out of Harvey Bay. There's just the amount of money that's pumped into turtle conservation there. It's a very well-known turtle hub. And people go from all around the world to see the turtles hatching there and laying eggs. But yet you've got literally on the headland, you've got all these drum lines that turtles are well known to get hooked in. And just the stark contrast of a conservation zone and a beach that is dedicated to that, to have this killing device and just sitting right there. Just it's really disappointing to see and huge amount of money going into both areas.

SPEAKER_04 46:34

Yeah. Must have been really eye-opening because for the majority of us, we'd never get to see that firsthand, you know, from sitting sitting here on land in our comfy living rooms. We can't even imagine what 410 shark control devices really looks like. And it's so great that you went out to try and document all that. And so you have filmed it all. When can we see your documentary?

SPEAKER_01 46:57

That's in the making.

SPEAKER_04 46:59

No pressure. I'm sure it'll take a while to work on.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Yeah, they do. And just yeah, you gotta take time to put together a a good story, and yeah, it'll come out hopefully in a year's time, within a year. We'll see.

SPEAKER_04 47:13

We'll be looking forward to it. Where can people head to support this campaign for humane shark control?

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Yes, on Instagram, it's 410 the lethal line, and we've got all our yeah, trip videos up there. There's still a few trickling in. Uh the trip report was challenging in limited reception. So they're still going through it. But yeah, on the 410 the lethal line is the link there to our chuffed page where we're raising money for humane world for animals who are advocating in the space of policy. So I think it's a government-managed program, so we need to really have pressure in the policy space to change these lethal methods. All areas are really important. Public opinion needs to change and put pressure on our politicians. So that's also an important part. So if people are interested in taking some action, then yeah, contact your local member of parliament for the state and letting them know that you want these lethal methods removed and more modern technology taken up, such as drones.

SPEAKER_04 48:16

Brenton Owens, Kaelin Lockhart, Pierrick Martin, thank you for your amazing work raising awareness about this issue. It's very inspiring. And thanks so much for joining us on Word on the Reef today.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Thank you, thanks for having us and letting us here continue the story.

SPEAKER_02 48:33

Thanks again. Great podcast.