On growing older, asking foolish questions and finding my voice
What I thought would be a steady plod towards retirement, with plenty of time spent nursing grandchildren, was abruptly upended exactly six years ago today. This is the story of how an environmental catastrophe changed the course of my life – and led me to reinvent myself. It is a reflection on how, and why, I became an accidental marine scientist.
(You can see my presentation to Reef Ecologic, ‘The Accidental Marine Scientist’, on YouTube.)
On 1 August 2020, after a night of heavy rain sent polluted water from a faulty pumping station on Norfolk Island’s plateau into Emily Bay, I began to realise that something was badly wrong with our small reef. I was nearly 61, had only recently started taking an underwater camera on my swims and knew virtually nothing about marine science. I had memories of the bay from years earlier, but no long-term dataset or photographs, no institutional position and no plan beyond trying to understand what I was seeing. And, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure that my memories were right. Was I mistaken? I had no evidence – just a hunch.
It took me a year to write publicly* about what was effectively an environmental disaster. I wanted to be sure of my facts, but I was also very afraid of being dismissed as an alarmist, an interfering woman or an ignorant member of the public who had mistaken a bit of seaweed for the collapse of civilisation. Instead, I began asking questions – of both long-term residents and marine scientists – researching the history of the site, and recording the changes I began to see occurring in the water in the aftermath of that disaster – increasing coral disease, fewer fish, more algae cover.
That event and my curiosity led to a complete change in my life: my website, which is now rated among the top coral reef blogs in the world; a growing photographic record; and, rather improbably, a PhD candidature in Marine Science. I began with a knowledge base of zero, and in many areas I still feel I’m only a few questions further along.
Environmental activism is often imagined as something conspicuous and dramatic, involving banners, megaphones, heavy machinery and somebody padlocked to a tree. I have never padlocked myself to anything, which is probably fortunate for both the tree and the emergency services. I prefer to call what I do environmental advocacy. My methods have been more ordinary: swimming, photographing, reading, writing, making submissions, attending meetings and asking the same questions again and again – especially when the first answer was waffle.
Much of it has happened – often early in the morning or late at night – at a computer with too many browser tabs open, following references through reports and occasionally discovering that a public statement bears only a passing resemblance to the document on which it is supposedly based. None of this is especially radical, but in the process of doing this work I have found that institutions often rely on people becoming tired, distracted or intimidated before they reach page 87 of the latest report. Consequently, those of us who bother reading to the end can end up being surprisingly troublesome. And for that I suppose I should apologise, but I don’t regret it one jot.
At the beginning, I asked very basic questions and some spectacularly naive ones. What was that red stuff growing over the coral? Was it normal? What was the story behind the water quality entering the bay? What happens to the water that travels underground? Could one event have caused what I was seeing, or was I joining dots that did not belong together? I learned that good scientists do not mind simple questions. They answer it if they can, explain the uncertainty if they cannot, and sometimes say, ‘That is interesting. But we don’t know.’
I also asked local people what they remembered. Some recalled clearer water, more fish or less algae; others did not see the changes I thought I was seeing, saying that the reef had always looked much the same. That does not make their knowledge unimportant. It shows how difficult environmental memory can be. We tend to treat the conditions we first knew as normal, with each generation beginning from a different starting point – a phenomenon known as shifting baseline syndrome. My own memory was no more immune to that than anyone else’s, which is why the photographs I was taking became so important. They gave me a baseline from 2020 onwards that did not depend on anybody’s recollection – including, and especially, mine.
Observation is not a substitute for science, but it is often where a scientific question begins. Then comes the less glamorous work of checking, asking, being corrected and sometimes abandoning a cherished theory because the evidence does not support it. I have become much less embarrassed about being wrong, provided I do not remain wrong after better information arrives.
As someone of a ‘certain age’, I remember a time when a woman’s role was very different. When my first marriage ended, I had to ask my estranged husband to go guarantor for a small home loan so I could put a roof over our children’s heads, despite the fact that his alcoholism meant he could barely hold down a job. I once went to buy a car and was told to return with him to seal the deal. He was invited to join a service club; I was told I could bake cakes for its fundraising stalls. I left my job to help him build his business. My mother-in-law even suggested that when we went swimming, I should let him win. I wasn’t even racing him!
The good
And the bad, Norfolk Island’s reef
None of that seemed especially extraordinary at the time. It was simply the water in which many women of my generation swam. We were encouraged to be capable but not threatening; independent but not at anybody else’s expense; clever but careful not to make a man feel foolish. We learned to soften statements, apologise before speaking and keep the emotional ‘weather’ pleasant, even when somebody else was causing the storm. One eventually tires of translating oneself into a form that other people find sufficiently palatable.
By later life, many women have accumulated a great deal of practical intelligence without necessarily calling it that. We have managed jobs, households, budgets, relationships, children, ageing parents, illness, grief and that special administrative purgatory of insurance companies and government departments. We know that a decision made in one place will have consequences somewhere else, and that the person promising an outcome is not always the person who must deliver it.
This is why the discovery of power in later life can be so emancipating. The person who once terrified you, or who controls your destiny – or even the destiny of an ecosystem like our reef – turns out to be an ordinary, flawed human being who may not be more capable or knowledgeable than you at all. He may simply be better at bluffing. Ministers, professors, chief executives, administrators and assorted Very Important People gradually lose their mythological status. Some are excellent, some are hopeless and most are somewhere in between. A title may indicate expertise, but it does not necessarily confer wisdom.
I value genuine expertise and seek it out constantly. The more I learn, the more clearly I see the vastness of what I do not know. Yet age and experience has taught me to distinguish expertise from hierarchy and confidence from competence. I no longer assume that another person’s certainty is proof of my inadequacy, nor that disapproval is proof I am mistaken. I care very much whether I am wrong; I care much less whether I am liked. That is not fearlessness or arrogance. It is simply a better allocation of my personal resources.
This is obviously not true of every woman or every man, but I do seem to see this personal growth more often in women. Perhaps that is because many men of our generation were never taught to doubt their entitlement to speak. There is no great epiphany in discovering a power you have always been permitted to exercise. Men may face a different reckoning as they age. For those whose authority came largely from a job, a title or the role of provider, retirement can take power away rather than reveal it. Their liberation may lie in discovering who they are when nobody reports to them. Some manage that transition brilliantly. Others continue chairing the breakfast table long after the organisation has dispensed with their services.
Keep turning up – all weathers, all seasons. Emily Bay, Norfolk Island
There is also a practical reason some women become more outspoken with age – the people in power have less hold over us. We may no longer need the job, let alone the promotion. Nor do we need the reference or the approval of the chair. Our children are grown, our careers are secure, transformed, or, more likely, done and dusted, and we have survived enough genuine difficulty that a pompous man being cross with us no longer feels like a national emergency.
I do not want to romanticise this. Many older women remain financially insecure, dependent on employment, carrying heavy caring responsibilities or are vulnerable to retaliation. Race, class, disability, health and circumstance all affect who can speak safely and who will be heard. But those of us who have reached a measure of freedom might as well use it, particularly when a younger person, or someone in a more precarious position, cannot. In fact, I almost feel it is our responsibility to point out the obvious.
I doubt my daughters will experience quite the same revelation. They already stand up for themselves, question authority and understand that confidence is not the same as competence, and thank goodness for that. My generation may be among the last for whom the discovery comes as such a shock – we had to learn that we were entitled to speak. Having said that, my daughters’ battles are not over, because progress is neither orderly nor guaranteed, but perhaps they can spend less of their lives asking whether they possess power and more on deciding what to do with it.
Activism, advocacy, however you wish to characterise it, has a reputation – full of conflict, sacrifice and outrage. Watching something you love deteriorate while governments respond at glacial speed is not conducive to one’s personal serenity. Even so, much of this unexpected chapter of my life has been joyful.
There is the pleasure of learning. My brain, somewhat to my surprise, remains curious and capable of retaining alarming amounts of information about coral disease, molluscan taxonomy, algae and wastewater infrastructure. I know far more about poo and wee than I ever imagined I would need to.
Then there are the friendships formed with researchers, writers, local people and other similarly inconvenient souls who care deeply about things that are easily overlooked. There is satisfaction in finding the missing report, making an unexpected connection or asking a question that shifts the discussion a few degrees.
Most of all, I have found a generous community of people who care about the environment and willingly share their knowledge and expertise – people who encourage you, buoy you up and help you keep going when others would rather tear you down.
Ornate anemone shrimp, Actinimenes ornatus, Norfolk Island
Stout moray, Gymnothorax eurostus, Norfolk Island
Anger may start the process, as it did for me when raw sewage entered the Kingston lagoon on the night of 31 July 2020 at alarming levels, but care is what keeps it running after the meetings become tedious. My work has never been only about documenting decline. I photograph and celebrate the abundance, ingenuity and absurdity of life on the reef – the shrimp inside an anemone, the fish defending a garden of algae, the moray waiting hopefully for somebody else to drop lunch. Norfolk Island’s reef is small, but it is crammed with lives that are territorial, industrious, hungry, flamboyant and frequently ridiculous. I believe it is difficult to care deeply about an ecosystem encountered only as a list of threats. People also need to know about the amazing stuff that is in there and why it is worth the trouble.
There has been another, more personal liberation around getting older. I put on a swimming costume almost every day and walk into a public bay. In earlier years, ashamed of what I looked like, I would have devoted considerable mental energy to what other people thought. Now I am generally too busy looking for fish. My body gets me into the water, carries my camera across the lagoon and brings me home again. It allows me to do work I love, which seems a more intelligent way to assess its value than whether it meets an aesthetic standard largely designed to sell women things. The reef does not require me to be young, thin or decorative.
That is part of the transformation too. Many of the rules that diminished women were always absurd. We were expected to be attractive but not vain, intelligent but not intimidating, competent but not controlling, outspoken but never shrill. We were told to age gracefully, which often appeared to mean quietly and somewhere out of view. I would rather age usefully.
Six years ago, I realised an environmental disaster was unfolding beneath our noses. In trying to understand it, I found myself doing work I could never have imagined – not in a million years.
I began knowing almost nothing. I asked questions, listened to people who knew far more than I did, made mistakes and kept going. In the end, the reef mattered more than my pride, my uncertainty or my fear of getting things wrong.
*The state of play on Norfolk Island's reef, 3 August 2021