In 2024, I very humbly accepted a Valerie Taylor Ocean Prize for ocean literacy, an initiative by Blue World that supports projects protecting and celebrating our oceans. Valerie Taylor herself is a legend in conservation, known for her fierce advocacy for sharks and her lifelong commitment to the sea. To be recognised under her name felt surreal.

The awards night was held at the Sydney Sea Museum, surrounded by people who care deeply about the ocean and everything that depends on it. Being in that room with people who share the same sense of purpose had refuelled me for another year of startup life, where passion often has to carry you further than sleep does.

The grant allowed me to purchase the microscope that now sits at the heart of everything I do: a Motic BA310E, a magnificent machine aptly named 'Val'. I switch between an iPhone mounted with a LabCam Pro adapter and a DSLR camera when the moment calls for more pixel and finess - a simple setup, but one that teleports me into another universe with clarity and precision.

This microscope became the backbone of the Microalgae Project - a program where school students head into the field, collect their own microalgae samples, and send them back to my lab. I turn those samples into cinematic videos, complete with annotations that explain what they’re seeing and how each species connects to the environment it came from. The goal is simple: help young people feel connected to nature by revealing its magnificent and ancient foundations that exist all around them.

Every time I look down Val's eyepiece, I’m reminded of how small we are, not in a diminishing way, but in a grounding one. We’re just another living thing on this planet, sharing space with organisms so tiny they’re almost invisible, yet so essential they shape entire ecosystems not to mention make more than 50% of the air we breathe - a beautiful and powerful irony. 

This work is my way of honouring that truth. And it all started with a microscope from Valerie Taylor.

There’s a particular strain of microalgae that has shaped years of my life, one I first discovered in the dam on my family farm in the Northern Rivers. At the time, I didn’t realise what I’d stumbled across. Only later, after digging through published research, did I learn that this tiny organism produces a natural immune‑stimulating compound that has been demonstrated in other studies to help prime the immune system in animals and humans. In a world facing rising antimicrobial resistance, something everyone should look up if they haven’t heard of it,  this kind of biology feels more important than ever.

It’s an elusive strain, notoriously difficult to find, purify, cultivate, and harvest. That alone might explain why it isn’t more widely known, despite the research behind it. Working with it feels like trying to tame a wild creature that refuses to be domesticated, and I’ve spent years trying.

I’ve poured time, energy, and more of my savings than I’d like to admit into learning how to grow this organism well. My home lab is full of bright green, bubbling vials each one a tiny experiment, a small gamble, a hopeful attempt to understand this species a little better. I’ve rebuilt cultures from scratch, run countless tests, and spent long nights troubleshooting problems that didn’t exist the day before. Microalgae doesn’t follow a rule book; it writes its own, and then rewrites it again just to keep you humble.

Along the way, I’ve spent time in world‑leading algae labs and spoken with experts across the biotechnology space. And the more I’ve learned, the more I’ve felt a growing frustration: for all the promise, all the glossy pitches, all the “world‑changing” technologies, very little seems to make it into everyday life. There’s a huge, invisible chasm between the excitement of the industry and the reality of what civilians actually experience.

I’m just one person doing backyard science, and even I can feel the weight of the challenges that large‑scale microalgae production faces. The intricacies, the unpredictability, the engineering hurdles - they’re enormous. I respect the grind. I understand why progress is slow. But I can’t help wondering whether the industry will meet the expectations it has set, or whether investors will eventually drift toward the next shiny promise.

Maybe it’s legislation. Maybe it’s economics. Maybe it’s simply the complexity of biology. Whatever the reason, I hope the field finds its momentum soon, because the potential is too important to lose to fatigue.

Despite all of this, my passion for this strain hasn’t faded. If anything, it’s sharpened. In the wake of COVID and the likelihood of future pandemics, the idea of strengthening immune resilience through nature feels more meaningful to me than ever. I’ve invested years into understanding this organism, and the future finally feels like it’s opening up. I’m about to begin a research collaboration with a local university - the first official academic step toward exploring the idea I’ve been nurturing on my own for so long.

It’s taken patience, stubbornness, many raised eyebrows, unwavering support from my family and a lot of late nights staring at cultures that refused to cooperate. But this little organism still feels worth it. And I’m not done with it yet.

On one of our field trips collecting microalgae, we stumbled across something completely unexpected, a rare mushroom found only in our little corner of the Northern Rivers. We were deep inside one of the last surviving remnants of the Big Scrub, a rainforest that once stretched across the region and into southeast Queensland. Only fragments remain today, but stepping into them still feels like stepping back in time.

We’d been sampling from small creeks and damp patches on the forest floor, surrounded by a blur of bird calls. A group of birders had driven down from Brisbane just to visit this reserve, famous for its wildlife. Land mullets rustled through the undergrowth, a python slipped away before we could get a proper look, and countless unseen creatures watched us pass. The whole place felt tropical, ancient, and alive.

My mum was with me, always up for an adventure and the best field assistant. She was the one who spotted it: a tiny blue mushroom, no bigger than a bean, poking out from the side of the trail. We believe it was a blue Coprinopsis, a species so elusive and so geographically restricted that it’s only known from this tiny pocket of subtropical rainforest. It was first discovered by Stephen Axford, the world‑renowned local mushroom photographer, and Catherine Marciniak, videographer and creative partner in the Follow the Rain fungi documentary. Their new book appears to feature a blue Coprinopsis on the cover, which hints at just how special this little fungus might be.

The moment we found it, algae sampling became a distant thought, but the distraction felt fitting. Fungi and microalgae share an ancient story that stretches far beyond a single field trip.

Around 550 million years ago, long before forests existed, algae and fungi formed one of the most important partnerships in the history of life. Algae captured sunlight and produced sugars; fungi offered structure, protection, and the ability to cling to surfaces. Together, they formed early symbiotic alliances that helped them inch their way onto land. Those partnerships eventually gave rise to mosses, ferns, towering forests, and the ecosystems we know today.

And the relationship never ended. Modern forests still run on fungal networks, the “wood wide web”, vast mycelial systems that connect tree roots and allow them to share nutrients, sugars, and chemical signals. Through these networks, trees support their neighbours, warn of threats, and redistribute resources in ways that continue to astonish scientists.

So yes, the blue Coprinopsis completely derailed our algae mission. But it also felt like the perfect reminder of how deeply intertwined life really is, how fungi, algae, plants, and entire ecosystems are built on ancient partnerships we rarely stop to notice.

Finding that tiny blue mushroom was a welcome detour, and a beautiful reminder that nature always has more stories waiting quietly on the side of the trail.