Hi, I’m Caitlin Younis!

My obsession with the ocean started early.

I grew up exploring the rock pools scattered along the Victorian coastline and have been diving since I was 12 years old. But despite that early connection, my path to becoming a coral researcher was anything but a straight line. I took a massive detour.

For a decade, my world consisted of cables, multi blend projection, soundboards, and lighting rigs as I built a career in the AV industry. Eventually, the pull of the ocean won out. I packed it all in, quit my job, and moved to the Great Barrier Reef.

My home away from home. Moore reef tabular corals showing off their colours

For the next five years, I lived the literal dream working as a dive instructor. Swapping conference rooms for the open ocean was incredible, but it also gave me a front-row seat to the 2017 mass bleaching event. Pointing out marine life to tourists suddenly didn't feel like enough anymore. Watching the reef change right in front of my mask sparked an absolute need to understand what was happening beneath the surface not just structurally, but biologically.

On board Reef Magic pontoon looking at settlement tiles for baby coral recruits

So, I did what any rational person completely obsessed with corals does: I went back to university as a mature student. I dove into a bachelor’s degree in marine science and management, which paved the way for my Honours year. There, I spent six months looking at symbiont distribution in three different coral species to see how these tiny, crucial algae varied across different reef types. Eventually, this path took me out of the water and straight into the lab. I had the lucky opportunity to do DNA analysis at UTS, and that was the ultimate game-changer. Meeting the incredible team there was my "lightbulb" moment, I knew instantly that this lab was exactly where I wanted to do my PhD.

Me diving with a Pulse Amplitude Flurometer (the ghostbuster device) for my honours project. This measures the photosynthesis efficiency of the algae within coral.

My PhD project looks at the role of selenium in the coral holobiont under thermal stress, using radiotracer technology. Coming from a background where I practically lived in the ocean, my biggest hurdle has definitely been swapping my wetsuit for a lab coat. Learning complex chemistry, handling radio tracers, and adapting to a highly controlled lab environment when you're used to being out in the field has been a massive learning curve.

I definitely didn’t take the standard, straight-out-of-high-school path into academia, and swapping a decade-long career for the life of a researcher has been a wild ride. While I am still figuring things out, I am incredibly excited and avid to be doing this work.