Cairns brothers Lyle and Cadel Squire have transformed boyhood adventures into a pioneering industry.

Each year, about 100 million people around the world view the work of Cairns brothers Lyle and Cadel Squire.

To date, five jumbo jets have exclusively transported their shipments from Far North Queensland to destinations in Europe and Asia. At times, their products are valued so highly that the brothers are met by media crews and police escorts who accompany them on the final leg of their journey.

But back home in Cairns few people know about the work of the Squires and even less suspect it is met overseas with the kind of reception usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. Perhaps most surprising is that the shipments greeted so enthusiastically contain fish.

Lyle Squire Jnr, 36, and his brother, Cadel, 33, together with their parents, Bev and Lyle Squire Snr, own and run the only Australian company supplying large marine animals for public aquariums around the world.

It’s a similar concept to collecting for multi-million dollar zoos, only most of the animals are not as familiar as lions (although some are more deadly) and all of them come carefully packaged in water.

So far, giant gropers, about 2.2m long and weighing up to 250kg, have been the biggest single fish shipped overseas, but plans to safely capture and transport even larger species are in the making. However, it’s not just about size. Along with saw fish, sharks, sting rays and maori wrasse, the Squires supply smaller species like sea anemones, clown fish and humbugs – all valuable specimens for public aquaria overseas.

“We collect carefully by hand without using drugs or chemicals on the animals,” Lyle says.

Aware of possible concerns from the environmental sector, the business operates under permits from four government departments. The brothers also have been working with the Department of Primary Industries, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and private operators to create a more comprehensive industry management  framework.

“We’ve been developing a code of conduct aimed at achieving world’s best practice for collectors and that’s due for release later this year,” Lyle says. “While most codes rely on voluntary commitment from operators, we’re trying to get some kind of compulsory obligation with consequences for infringements. We want the industry’s efforts documented and open to public scrutiny to increase people’s confidence in our role as reef stewards.”

The desire to pioneer new industry practice is a recurring theme in conversations between Lyle and Cadel, but it goes way beyond paperwork. There’s a fundamental and shared sense of adventure between them – an accumulated experience of discovery and potential danger that has bound them together since childhood.

The business began life on the site of today’s  Hilton Cairns hotel. Before the hotel, there was an aquarium belonging to their grandfather.

By the time the “oceanarium” closed in the 1970s, Lyle was six years old and an experienced tour guide. “Not officially, but I knew all the animals. I would show people around and then casually ask for an ice cream,” he says.

“The best time of day was after closing because that’s when we played with the animals. That’s when Dad used to put Cadel on his back and take him swimming in the turtle and dugong tank.”

Although Cadel was too young to remember, Lyle recalls a busy little brother “always poking and prodding things he wasn’t supposed to go near and having to get stitches in a finger after being attacked by a puffer fish”. “Mum worked at the aquarium and there wasn’t any daycare back then so she kept us with her. She was always worried,” he says.

When the aquarium closed, the boys’ grandfather gave their father three saltwater crocodiles (only two were large enough to eat people). They lived in the family’s suburban back yard until the neighbours objected. “I do remember being really annoyed that we had to cancel our plans for a weekend because Dad was bitten by one of the crocs,” Cadel says.

The animals were transferred to the crocodile farm at Hartley’s Creek and the boys’ parents took regular jobs in government positions. But life was not entirely staid.

Dad taught them spear fishing on the weekends and the boys, after school, would climb around “the drain outlets with the other kids using old gear from the aquarium to catch fish,” Cadel says.

It’s not clear whether Mum ever got a chance to stop worrying. Lyle finished school and completed a degree in landscape architecture (the idea being a steady and outdoor source of employment). But while studying he’d begun working holidays collecting fish for a small wholesale aquarium. Cadel also joined the business as a young diver. When that business came up for sale in 1995, the Squire family combined finances and bought it.

The original warehouse was in Scott St. From the street it looked like an ordinary old Queenslander, but inside there was a sprawling mass of tanks with small sharks in the back yard. Down at Trinity Inlet, an old fishing trawler completed the company’s assets.

Since then, the business has grown from the immediate family and three part-time divers, to more than 20 employees and about eight divers. It also has moved to larger and more practical premises in Stratford.

The family won their first major aquarium contract in 1998. “Portugal was the make or break job for us,” Lyle says.

With only one month between signing and final delivery to Lisbon, the Squires organised a jumbo jet for transport, built more holding facilities at the warehouse and containers for transport and then caught all the fish. They had guaranteed 80 per cent delivery of the specific species stipulated by the aquarium.

The family made the deadline but Cadel didn’t make the trip. He was left on the airport tarmac with some of the larger animals whose containers wouldn’t fit on board the already full plane. “I had to take them home and look after them,” he says.

At the end of the 36-hour flight, only one small fish had been lost. “Its water had become fouled so we moved it into another container with a shark that we thought would be too stressed to eat. But it wasn’t. It was an accident, but sort of a good sign for us about how the shark was coping,” Lyle says.

The business has blossomed since that trip with smaller shipments, including a delivery of one maori wrasse and two saw fish to Minnesota that had police shutting down a five-lane highway to ease the animals’ transfer between the airport and aquarium, interspersed among exclusive jumbo jet transports to Japan, Guam, Korea and China.

“You don’t realise how much you’ve learned about handling a species until you arrive and you need to support the aquarium staff at the other end,” Cadel says.

 “The animals are what we enjoy most, especially the larger ones. Handling and caring for them is a unique experience. It’s not until you start working with them that you realise how much there still is to learn.

“Catching is easy in comparison to caring for them. For instance, sharks and rays are covered in mites that can get out of control in captivity and kill them. We’re not scientists but we have access to a broad range of species so we work with vets, researchers and other aquariums on developing husbandry techniques and even just basic knowledge about the animals themselves.”

Lyle explains their interest in spear fishing has waned. “When you spend so much time looking after the animals and working to keep them alive it changes things,” he says. The brothers have taken the challenge a step further by developing catch techniques that minimise risk and injury to the animals.

Neither will say much about their close calls under water other than a general mention of knowing what it’s like to have something big try to eat you. They also won’t dwell on the risks associated with their attempts to go deeper for longer using new dive technology.

But they will admit to having had the “hard” discussions with their wives and only receiving the family’s agreement to proceed on condition that they take small calculated steps to mitigate risks.

“But it’s something we’ve always wanted to do. It’s the frontier,” Cadel says. In the water, Lyle says they have absolute confidence in each other. “We know each other’s limits and how we react to things.”

While scuba divers don’t usually go beyond about 40m, the brothers are pushing for collecting depths of at least 120m, but preferably 150m. “We can see all these species down there including ones never identified before,” Lyle says.

“We see the Great Barrier Reef as God’s ultimate aquaculture project. Millions of people visit the animals we collect – that makes them educational ambassadors for the Reef. There is nothing better than standing around a tank at one of the aquariums we’ve supplied and watching the adults point to the fish for their children.”

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