10 years of competing
at national and international level in Strongman was fantastic,
just being able to demonstrate crazy abilities
to make people laugh and smile
and look in wonder and go "How does somebody do that?"
You know you've made it when you appear on a cereal packet.
My best event was the farmer's walk.
So in 2001 I carried a total of 320 kg in one go.
And at the time that was the best in the world.
It was really good fun.
I look back now and think "Well, I did 9 or 10 years of hard slog.
"Now it's the universe."
My name is Michael Sidonio. I'm an amateur astronomer.
And not that long ago I was part of a team
that discovered a galaxy.
And I'm pretty happy about that.
I first wanted to buy a telescope
because I'd just recently got my first paying job.
I thought it'd be cool to have a telescope
to peer across the valley and see what was going in all those houses.
But I soon forgot those initial thoughts
and spent all my time pointing it up.
I didn't end up doing astronomy at a professional level.
My life went in a slightly different direction...
What I'd go to bed dreaming about was my next workout
and astronomy became the second thing that was in the background.
The night I inadvertently photographed NGC 253-dw2,
I was intending to photograph a very nearby galaxy called NGC 253.
And there was this little smudge on the outer edge of the full frame.
It was quite amazing to realise I'd discovered a galaxy.
Who knew that there's this little smudge
that little Michael Sidonio in Canberra managed to pick up?
Today we're looking for black cod or Epinephelus daemelii
and they're an endangered species of fish.
But over the years they've made quite a big comeback, we've noticed.
So I feel pretty confident that we can find them.
My name's Georgia Poynter and I'm 15 years old
and I'm basically just obsessed with the ocean
and contribute to citizen science and tropical fish survey work.
I live in Narooma. I've lived here all my life.
It's quiet. There's not a lot of shops and things.
But it's right on the coast so you get to do lots of diving and fishing.
I first started out as a two-year-old.
Dad would take me out fishing and out on the boat.
At 12, I got my scuba ticket and I also got my boat licence.
Generally in the water two to three times during the week
and then both days on the weekend.
Most of the time I spend actually with Dad.
We're like best buds.
See that little white clear bit there, Georgie?
That's where I wanna put the anchor in.
I contribute to quite a few citizen science projects.
One of them is Redmap.
Anyone in the public - you don't have to be a scientist -
when you're out on the water and you see anything unusual
you take a photo and log it
and then scientists will identify it and confirm it
and it goes and contributes to research.
This is my Redmap page and these are all the different species
and sightings I've logged.
I've had 130 species confirmed on Redmap.
They show up all the different sightings
and it's been pretty much all mine and I'm like... (laughs)
I saw a species of jellyfish and thought "That looks really weird"
and it turned out to be Cephea cephea or the cauliflower jellyfish
and it was the second time it's ever been discovered in Australia.
The specimen actually ended up going to the Australian Museum
and they've now got it in there... in a jar or something, I dunno!
So citizen science has actually been around for a long time,
probably 200 years or more, starting with Darwin and Linnaeus,
where they had people collecting animals
to look at them and study them.
Hi, I'm Paul Flemons.
I'm the citizen science manager here at the Australian Museum.
This is the DigiVol lab.
We have around 70 volunteers come in each week
to help us digitise our collections here.
What drove me to it?
Well, I had nothing else to do with my time
and I looked around for something useful to do
and when I told my other son I was getting a job at the museum
he says "What are you, an exhibit?"
I expect there's somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 citizen scientists
active around Australia.
A lot of science cannot be done
without the engagement of citizen science.
It is a bit difficult to balance school
and also the diving and citizen science.
I'm not gonna lie. I quite often forget the school stuff.
The balancing of work and astronomy can be difficult at times.
Obviously because it's a night-time endeavour
it has to be done after work.
But when the sky is crystal clear it's pretty hard to leave it.
The observatory I recently built is located just north of the ACT.
Sometimes out at the observatory I get the urge to break into song.
I do enjoy singing opera, especially after a couple of beers
or a couple of whiskies.
(Sings opera)
I'm this weird kid at school that likes diving and fishing.
No one else really likes it.
Not 100% sure what I want to do when I leave school
cos I do love the whole marine science side
but don't really like the theory side of things.
I love being out on the water and doing things.
With free diving, you just go down
and the fish don't look at you as if you're something weird.
You feel a part of everything and it's a really good feeling.
Once you're under the stars at night, stretched right across the sky,
you go "Wow, look at that! I'm part of that."
I like the fact that I get to do what I love doing
but I also get to contribute and help out with science.
I might start getting sick of going to work tired
but I think I'll be doing this probably the rest of my life.