ABC nature journalist Dr Ann Jones, best known for her ornithological series, The Secret Lives of Urban Birds and Meet the Penguins, has revealed her wilder side. In the new six-part series, Dr Ann’s Secret Lives, she swaps the gentle art of backyard bird-watching for the choppy seas off Queensland and Western Australia, and the jungles of Borneo, chasing bull sharks, sea snakes, orangutans, sea turtles, dugongs and pangolins. The scientists dedicated to monitoring their survival are as much a focus as the animals.

“We don’t exist separate to nature,” says Jones, who lives with a strictly indoor Maine Coon cat named Bubbles and a freshwater prawn called Prawn Connery.

“All natural history documentaries are made on the back of research from people, like those featured in this program,” says Jones. “I think it’s important to not shy away from how we get information, which sometimes means that you’re uncomfortable. But that’s how we find out things that will protect the species.”

In the series, marine ecologist Nicolas Lubitz remarks that the work of biologists is, “95 per cent boredom, 5 per cent chaos”.

Jones agrees: “The majority of the work that a scientist does will be based in an office or a lab, in front of a computer. And so what you see [in the series] is the high point of the year when they actually spend time with the animals. Fieldwork is addictive. I think it fuels the rest of their year.”

In the first episode, Jones joins Lubitz and his team on a perilous expedition tagging bull sharks off the coast of Townsville, during which she becomes visibly distressed as the thrashing fish is roped.

“I was scared, but I expected to worry more about myself,” says Jones. “But the way in which they subdue a shark is by catching it and then turning it upside down, and then it goes into a sleepy state. And to see this animal so completely vulnerable – I’m just a complete softie. And this is probably why I’m a broadcaster and not a scientist. I’m just like, ‘Oh my god, let it go! Let it go!’”

In Moreton Bay near Brisbane, the seagrass-munching dugong stole her heart. “They were surprisingly muscular. They have really dense whiskers, triple the thickness of a cat whisker. And their breath smells like grass.”