Today’s Sunday profile we introduce Phyll and Tony Bartram from Kangaroo Island Dolphin Watch.

Having a Natural Resource Management / Environmental Science Degree it’s no wonder that all things nature and environmental interest me. I grew up on a farm, so I’m not a traditional ‘tree hugger’ but I do love animals and sleeping under the stars. The Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island are special parts of our country and so are the wide range of animals and sea life we are lucky enough to have here on our doorstep.

When Phyll Bartram from Kangaroo Island won a prize through the Fleurieu App Win button and we started chatting online, it was no wonder we hit it off! From that moment I have been watching from afar the awesome work and sensational pictures that come through our social media from Dolphin Watch.

Dolphin Watch is a not for profit longitudinal Citizen Science project voluntarily monitoring dolphins in the Kangaroo Island region since 2005, and in the oceans around Victor Harbor since 2011. It is also Phyll and Tony’s baby.

Originally created as a project for senior students to involve them in practical environmental studies and issues related to the marine environment, it has morphed into a longitudinal community project which sees Citizen Science volunteers of all ages actively involved in data collection, analysis, collation, cataloguing etc.

I was lucky enough to be invited to join the Dolphin Watch volunteers at Victor Harbor on a recent survey on Eco Tourism operator, The Big Duck Boat Tours new vessel “Kondoli”, along with some year 11 students from Investigator College. Tony gave us an informative description of why it’s important to do such surveys so we can observe what is happening to our local dolphins. This tells us a lot about the health of the dolphin population and the health of the wider marine environment. Each dolphin requires 25 grams of fresh fish per day to keep active and healthy, imagine if our waters are not healthy enough to sustain this….and this is only one species in our marine environment! His descriptions about identifying each dolphin by its markings and how to tell what sex the dolphin is, definitely had the students highly engaged!

Armed with our cameras we headed out to sea. Our vessel, The Big Duck is out regularly with marine tours, so they have good knowledge where the dolphins have been seen recently. Sure enough, it didn’t take long to find our first pod of dolphins busy feeding alongside a reef. The long-term volunteers were pointing out the dolphins by name and getting excited by a couple of new additions. I too was very excited to see a mother swimming alongside the boat showing off her new baby (Ok, I was just excited by the dolphins even before we saw the new baby!).

The volunteers all have environmental passion in common plus a love for dolphins and the marine environment. Everyone can see the need and understand the relevance of the dolphin watch surveys. Its value to the global community and worldwide conservation effort is understood fully.

Their purpose is to monitor and gather data regarding the movements of dolphins in our regional waters, creating ever expanding catalogues of Common Bottlenose dolphins and Short beaked Common dolphins, using photographic identification. Establishing dolphins’ home range and preferred habitats enables Dolphin Watch to work towards increasing their protection with a view to conservation.

In August Kangaroo Island / Victor Harbor Dolphin Watch was announced a finalist for the 2021 South Australian Citizen Science Awards for Outstanding Community Engagement – and were just declared the winner this week, resulting in a much needed $5,000 award prize - congratulations team! This is an extraordinary achievement for a small team of volunteers.

Volunteers experience life changing community action and custodianship, caring for their environment and natural resources, impacting globally and effecting change. My visit to the sea with these marine custodians will have a lasting effect on me, and was a great reminder that if we all do one small thing for our environment today, together we can save our world.

More information on Dolphin Watch:

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