Wendy Mitchell | Underwater Photographer | Diver | Freediver | Sailor | Australia | Indonesia
Wendy is originally from Western Australia but has now spent many years travelling and working outside her home state, yet she loves to return, as the ocean and land-based adventures in WA are hard to resist.
After following her diving career, Wendy ended up in Indonesia. She started off by working in remote southern Sulawesi, where she made the decision to dedicate her upcoming years to learning Indonesian and exploring and understanding more about the vast archipelago - what she learned after around five years is that it will require many more years to come, on the ground and underwater to really begin to understand this incredible collection of cultures, languages and ecosystems.
After spending several seasons in West Papua around the magical Raja Ampat, Wendy well and truly developed a love for the eastern side of the archipelago. Working in Raja Ampat, Wendy was both land-based, where she got to live a part of a local village and later moved to cruise-directing liveaboard's which continued to fill her ocean addiction. She had the opportunity to teach many of the Raja Ampat locals how to dive, the highlights being some of the women from the village she was living in, who thrived with the opportunity of learning to dive and some now continue to work professionally around the area.
In late 2021, Wendy purchased her first sailboat with her partner and they have since sailed over 20,000 nm, from the southern ocean of Western Australia up into Timor Leste and into Indonesia, with endless ocean dreams at their fingertips, they headed south from the Carnarvon to the deep sea canyons of the south coast of Western Australia to spend time with Australia's largest population of orcas and had lucky encounters with sperm whales, false killer whales, pilot whales in a truly wild ecosystem. Wendy expressed that months of open ocean sailing, organisation and dedication - even when things got tough, really paid off.
Heading north Wendy and her partner visited some of the offshore reefs around the northwest of Western Australia, Scott Reef in particular they documented extensively as it sits on a large deposit of oil and gas and is currently threatened by development from greedy mining giant Woodside. They met Indonesian fishing fleets who were visiting Australian waters and fishing under traditional rights and followed their journey back up into Indonesia. Learning about the generations before them who made the journey down into those vast waters.
Wendy says that 2023 has bought some land time and she has had the opportunity to follow the shark fin trade from Indonesia to Hong Kong and Taiwan, understanding what the current driving factors of the trade are. Further leading her to Sri Lanka where she is now, documenting the world's largest fishery of mantas and devil rays.
Soon they are set to soon return to the sea, as they prepare their boat "Sasha" for a journey into the Banda Sea, Indonesia, with many exciting adventures to come... Wendy hopes we can jump on board and follow her upcoming journey, and we cannot be more thrilled to follow her interesting journey!
When did you start your storytelling journey?
I have always been sharing my experiences with people around me, but when I started working in diving I was spending many hours a day underwater or on the water. I began to document it through photos or video to try and help others who weren't so familiar with the ocean understand what I was talking about - It has been evolving ever since.
What are the fondest memories from your upbringing that you feel impacted your life choices and lifestyle today?
I was lucky enough to grow up with a lot of freedom, surrounded by large open spaces filled with endless bushland to explore. I would take off on my motorbike on the weekend by myself and go on full-day journeys exploring different areas, picking wildflowers and watching wildlife, or collecting things that I thought were interesting at the time! I think growing up in this way engrained my desire to spend time in wild places, fueled by my adventurous spirit it has pushed me to where i am today. I don't think I ever stoped living in the way I was when I was younger - but now I have the world at my fingertips.
What path did you choose after leaving school?
I worked in many different jobs and studied different bits and pieces, but I really didn't find my feet until committing to working in the ocean - I found this after completing my divemaster and then continued to work as an instructor and cruise director across Australia and Indonesia.
What/who currently inspires you?
Ian Urbina - definitely inspires me, the work he has done telling stories of the high seas is incredibly difficult and often dangerous. International waters are such a complicated place to document but he has worked tirelessly to share the stories of illegal fishing and human rights violations and so much more, a space I would love to dedicate time to in the years to come.
What would you most like to change in the world/environment today?
I just wish that we could find some sort of larger shift away from plastics. I know a lot of work is being done to begin moving away and phasing out certain products in some nations is already underway, but at the end of the day for the average person to go to the supermarket and buy food it's so hard to avoid purchasing plastic. Such a huge percentage of food products are contained in it. We are surrounded by it on land, in the ocean, in or on our food, in our homes, and inside our bodies! There is simply just too much and sadly it's not going anywhere quickly!
I would also love to see people raise their awareness of seafood consumption, simply beginning by asking some basic questions - Where did this seafood I'm about to buy come from? How was it caught? What species is it? I feel like there is a huge disconnect between people consuming and understanding what they are eating, what the process was to capture that wild seafood and it ending up on your plate. The more educated we can be about what we are eating the better chance we have at protecting fish stocks for small local fisheries and in turn protecting our wider oceans as a whole.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to follow their dreams as an Ocean Storyteller?
Just start spending time in the ocean, as much time as you possibly can, the rest will develop around you! It's all about experience, I'm forever collecting experience in the ocean, seeing and understanding different aspects of the marine environment and it's always developing and changing around me. Eventually, you will have so many stories at your fingertips and then it's just about harnessing them in your preferred medium and sharing them with your audience.
What legacy do you hope to leave?
I hope that through my work and personal life, I can inspire enough people to choose the journey in life that most inspires them because when people truly follow their passion, great things begin to happen.
INSTAGRAM: @wendys.underwater.world
