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Bill Leggat
I have a BSc. (HONS) and a PhD from James Cook University (Townsville, Australia). What are your areas of specialty? My area of speciality is the biochemistry of marine symbioses. This involves examining the biochemistry and physiology of both symbiotic invertebrates (e.g. corals, giant clams), the algae (zooxanthellae) which live within the host's tissue, and the interaction between the two. What is your daily job like? I am lucky enough to spend most of my day doing research on corals and their zooxanthellae. My time is spent with periods in the laboratory doing experiments and analysing data and time in the field. What is the most exciting thing about your job? The research is the most exciting part of my job. It is an amazing feeling when you discovery something new and realise that you are the first person to realise what it is, it gets you walking on cloud nine for days. What is the most boring thing about your job? Luckily enough at the moment there is not really a boring part to my job, I love going in every day. Did you always know you wanted to be a marine biologist (or work around the ocean)? Did you start out wanting to do something else? I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist since I was about 9 or 10. We lived about 100 km from the ocean and go for a holiday to the coast 2 or 3 times a year. I used to love putting a mask on and swimming around the rocks or sticking my head in a rock pool and looking at all of the sea life. Where did you grow up as a child? I grew up in a small country town called Armidale in New South Wales Australia half way between Brisbane and Sydney, this town is about 1000 m above sea level and 100 km from the coast, a funny place to find a marine biologist. How did you become interested in the oceans? Did you have a hero growing up that got you interested in the ocean? Who were your role models, then and now? I became interested in the ocean while walking around the rock pools on holidays or going for a snorkel. Because we lived away from the coast it was always a special experience to see the ocean. I didn't have a hero or role model growing up, now I think my role models are all the scientists who first started looking at the ocean and wondering what was happening beneath the waves. What is the coolest thing you have seen underwater? Probably the coolest thing I have seen underwater is a female dolphin and her young baby. We were coming back from a dive when someone saw a dolphin surfing the bow wave of the boat. We stopped in the middle of the blue water and about 8 of us jumped in to swim with her. As soon as we were off the boat she appeared and would zip around us about 20 metres away. If someone tried to get close to her she would disappear into the haze and reappear from a completely different direction. It was only after about 15 min that she came closer, it was then that we realised she had a small baby with her. The baby just rested against her belly and was pulled along in her slipstream, it didn't have to bother swimming at all. After swimming around with us for another 20 minutes the mother and baby zoomed off into the distance and we didn't see her again. Scariest? My scariest moment under water was doing a night wreck dive in the Solomon Islands. After penetrating into the hull of the upturned ship we came across the cargo area. One of my dive buddies had problems getting through the hatch, when he finally got through he kicked hard and stirred the silt that had been sitting on the bottom, it was impossible to see anything. We were forced to simply sit still for about 10 minutes waiting for the silt to settle, all the while depleting our air. Needless to say we all breathed a rather large sigh of relief when we finally got out of the ship. Funniest? I think the funniest thing I have seen underwater was at Orpheus Island near Townsville. My buddy and I were swimming just above the bottom when I heard a startled yelp from my buddy. A 2 foot long remora (sucker fish) that had been lying on the bottom waiting for a large fish to swim by had spied us swimming over, he had zipped off the bottom and attached himself to the wetsuit of my buddy in a rather delicate position. Even though we got it off it continued following us for the rest of the dive and would occasionally try and resume it's former position attached between my buddies legs. What are you most looking forward to about this mission? I think the thing I am most looking forward to about the mission is just being able to look out the porthole and see the reef life morning noon and night. What do you like to do that's not work-related, like hobbies (coin collecting, sky diving, gourmet chef, boating, raising a family, tennis - that sort of thing)? Playing with my dog, reading and bushwalking. What advice would you offer to a middle/high school student or undergraduate who wants to be a marine biologist? My suggestion to any student wanting to study marine biology is to go and talk to people who are doing the job you want to do in 5 years. If you want to work with dolphins find out who is doing that and arrange to meet them, if you want to study in Antarctica talk to someone who has been there. Also don't get discouraged if it seems you will never get there, the people that normally succeed are those that don't give up.
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