In the rugged and wild Great Australian Bight, at the base of plunging sandstone cliffs where the desert meets the sea, lives one of the rarest marine mammals on Earth – the Australian sea lion.
But these adorable ‘puppies of the sea’ face an uncertain future due to decades of overfishing, habitat destruction and anthropological climate change, and one marine park ranger, Dirk Holman, has devoted his life to turning the situation around.
Growing up in the small coastal town of Port Lincoln, Dirk spent his youth surfing along South Australia’s coastline. It’s home to the largest commercial fishing fleet in the southern hemisphere, and after finishing high school, Dirk started working on these boats. Unsurprisingly, fishermen who have witnessed the threats facing our oceans firsthand can often become some of the fiercest marine advocates, and at 28, Dirk decided to
