Is adventure tourism, with a scientific vocation, the new way to attract travelers?
From tracking echidna poop, catching mosquitoes, or counting face masks on beaches, citizen science is helping to increase scientific records and data.
But it’s not just for locals. A new style of tourism encourages people to engage with landscapes and wildlife while visiting places, rather than just taking in the sights.
In South Australia, Kangaroo Island is known for its unique and abundant wildlife.
But 25,000 koalas and 50,000 farm animals died in the fatal wildfires of the Black Summer of 2019-2020.
Two people also lost their lives.
Roanna Horbelt has been rescuing orphaned native animals at her Wildlife Land Trust Sanctuary for the past decade. He said the fires tested his mettle.
Roanna Horbelt and the rescued kangaroo Choco on Kangaroo Island, SA. (ABC Movin’ To The Country: Tony Hill)
“We were on the fire ground all the time and you see horrible things, but we didn’t focus on that,” he said.
“I don’t have a picture. We’ve been focusing on the positives.
“We focused on live animals and had 150 to 200 kangaroos in the sanctuary at that stage, where it really was a sanctuary.”
Tourism that helps wildlife
Ms. Horbelt and her partner, Phil Smith, saw an opportunity to give back to animals not only through rehabilitation, but also through research and conservation.
They started an ocean tourism operation running small-group boat tours on the remote northwest coast of Kangaroo Island to introduce people to the amazing diversity of animals, landscapes and geology.
Roanna Horbelt and Phil Smith are partners in business and in life. (ABC Movin’ To The Country: Tony Hill)
Tourists, along with active citizen scientists, contribute to monitoring and data collection programs by taking photos, observing sites and animals, and making new discoveries.
Kangaroo Island Dolphin Watch coordinator Tony Bartram said surprisingly not much was known about dolphins.
“People think we know a lot, because dolphins are on T-shirts, in movies, on TV, everything else, but they actually come across as poor data,” he said.
“Getting baseline data on all dolphin species is incredibly important.”
Bartram said this area of Kangaroo Island was the perfect place to do these tours.
Halina Baczkowski meets Roanna Horbelt on Movin’ To The Country. (ABC Movin’ To The Country: Tony Hill)
“It’s not like being in Queensland. In South Australia, the marine environment is largely unexplored,” he said.
Bartram had high hopes for the project.
“It’s important to us because it gives us a greater flow of data, but it also means we’re reaching places we couldn’t reach before,” he said.
“The limits of the research we’ve done so far are the limits on us and how far we travel, not on dolphins.”
Not only tourists can see dolphins. They have also seen whales and ospreys that were not previously thought to inhabit the area.
One of the many amazing whales caught off the coast of Kangaroo Island during Roanna’s tours. (ABC Movin’ To The Country: John Natoli)
Seeing a whale’s tail, known as a fluke, is the money shot. Unique markings help identify the whale.
The more cameras the better, according to Ms. Horbelt.
“The data they collect is vital. It’s not easy to get a whale strike or a fin because the animals move so fast,” he said.
“Bloody hard work” pays off
Another citizen scientist, Sue Holman, has been documenting the ocean life around the island for eight years and was surprised by the data that came back from the trips.
“There are only seven recorded [osprey] nests around the island and they didn’t think there were any on the far north shore, no nests,” he said.
“This is new data. This is cutting-edge stuff that we really want to show … there are nests up there that nobody knows about.”
Ms Horbelt acknowledged that the visits were doing ground-breaking work.
“All this data goes to different citizen sciences [web-based] platforms,” he said.
“They were very excited when they saw my shots by chance because no humpback whale shots had ever been recorded here in Kangaroo Island waters.”
His partner, Mr Smith, was not surprised that no one else had started a citizen tourism operation in the area.
“It’s too much hard work,” he laughed.
“It’s not going to be an easy business to run, but it’s going to be a fun business. We’re going to discover a lot with this science background and we can’t wait.”
Mrs. Horbelt was not shying away from this hard work either.
“Part of tourism is to fund research, to be honest, but it also gives people a reason to be excited to see something new, and discovering new things is exciting for anyone,” he said.
For more on his work and other groundbreaking stories, watch Movin’ to the Country on ABC TV, Fridays at 7.30pm or anytime on ABC iview.