Mike Sugden

Guest Lecturer

Mike has worked with Coral Expeditions since 2005, on the inaugural cruise of the Coral Discoverer. As a zoologist and marine biologist Mike has always had a thirst for exploring and has been lucky enough to be invited on numerous expeditions into some of the most isolated underwater environments in the world. With a keen interest in wildlife photography particularly in the underwater environment his work has been used in numerous publications, at one stage providing much of the interpretive photography for Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife, including brochures.

His underwater photography has taken him across the Indian Ocean, into the Atlantic and extensively throughout the Pacific.

Mike has been on CSIRO projects such as the three-year sharks and ray survey of Ningaloo, surveys of the marine environment off SW Western Australia, the Green Zones of the Great Barrier Reef. He has also done Oceanographic work between Hobart and Antarctica, helping out with the

Imax film on Adele Penguins while staying on the French base at Dumont d’urville. His work on the coast of Japan, Galapagos, across the Pacific and around Australia in places like Roley Shoals, Lizard Island and Tasmania involved the identification, photographing and recording the marine life found in these underwater environments and brings a wealth of knowledge on the marine life found in our oceans.

Mike first used compressed air underwater as a child in Western Australia, but went on to dive extensively around Tasmania where he set up dive safety programs with Commonwealth funding and logged over seven thousand dives as an instructor, finishing as a dive instructor trainer and examiner. He was reluctantly talked into competition diving and won a number of national titles, before winning the Australian Underwater Sportsman of the year in 1980.

Mike remains an active diver and photographer, both on land and underwater and each year produces a bird calendar which is sent around the world.