ALUMNI STORIES – ARTS AND SCIENCE
A focus on the bizarre and beautiful Merging Arts and Science has paid off in a spectacular fashion for Fraser Johnston.
Ghost fungi, glow worms, luminous oceans and rarely
A highlight was the seamount research conducted
seen animals from the inky depths – these are not
through the Marine Biodiversity Hub, he said.
organisms you can see in a zoo!
“To see all the weird creatures pulled up from the
So begins Tasmania-based Fraser Johnston’s teaser
depths, and to see the researchers’ excitement. Normally
for his science-communication production company,
they would only see such animals in specimen jars,
Spectral. Bringing rarely seen sides of nature to light
but here they were in the flesh, from 1000 metres deep,”
has earned Johnston (BSc 2013, BA Hons 2014) an
Fraser said.
Emmy Award nomination for his work on David Attenborough’s Life that Glows.
It’s not the regular, market-driven fluffy animals or predator scenes that fascinate Fraser as much as
Working in Attenborough documentaries was a dream
“anything weird or a bit removed from humans”.
come true for the Arts-Science graduate who specialises
Things that glow in the dark, like glow worms, which
in conveying natural history, science and adventure.
he describes as looking like aliens, adding, “There’s
Using his understanding of the natural world and his
nothing like them.”
love of exploring little-known extraordinary places,
And then there was the unique access provided to
Fraser’s work has taken him to Australia’s deepest
Tasmania’s Junee Florentine cave system, which boasts
caves, to the Torres Strait, and on the RV Investigator
Australia’s deepest caves, and the experience working
surveying seamounts around Tasmania.
with a group of cavers who broke Australia’s cave depth record in 2019. The four-day expedition near Mount Field National Park set a new depth record of 395 metres.
D eep-sea life forms photographed by Fraser Johnston during research of Tasmania’s seamounts.
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