If you’re thinking ‘new year, new career,’ but don’t want to be chained to a desk, allow Stuff’s daily news podcast Newsable to assist. In a week-long series of special summer episodes, the team chats to people with jobs or workplaces outside the ordinary. Today, Tyler Hall, who went from fitting fire alarms to caring for marine life as an aquarist.

Tyler Hall was 27, stuck in a job that he didn’t like, and depressed.

He’d been working construction jobs since he left school at 17. He took an opportunity as a fire alarm technician in Auckland, but he still wasn’t feeling it.

Hall told Newsable: “I would just spend time on these [work]sites not really feeling it. You know, it was really hard and at the time, I was going through pretty bad depression, just not knowing what I wanted to do, where I wanted to be… I wasn’t happy at all.”

Hall asked himself ‘what do I like doing?’

He knew he loved the ocean.

Then, it came to him – he wanted to study marine biology at AUT. The next step was getting a diving qualification, and as they say, the rest is history.

He’s now the head aquarist at Kelly Tarlton’s, after working there for less than two years. He spoke about why he “fell in love” with the job, how he rose through the ranks so quickly, and what makes his job special.

The animals he works with on a day-to-day basis include sharks, turtles, and an octopus. He was recently tasked with giving an injection to a shark, which is as tricky as it sounds.

Listen to the full interview here.

Newsable is Stuff’s daily news podcast, wrapping up what’s worth talking about in a short package every weekday morning. You can find new episodes and more detail on our stories here or in our newsletter. Make sure to like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts and across Instagram and TikTok.