00:0040 nautical miles off Western Australia's south coast, flesh-footed shearwaters and
00:07Indian yellow-nosed albatross tussle over a skerrick of food.
00:11These majestic seabirds high on the birdwatchers must see list.
00:16Among the crowd, veteran birdwatchers.
00:18How long have you been birdwatching?
00:20All of this century.
00:21A new generation of twitchers is also on board.
00:24It's been an addiction since I was about eight years old.
00:28I got into birding about three years ago and yeah, I've sort of gotten addicted since
00:32then.
00:33Oh yeah, no.
00:34Members of Generation Z taking their passion for phone-based games like Pokemon Go to sightings
00:39of rare and favourite birds.
00:42You can list and you can see what other people are getting in your area and across Australia
00:46and you can see where you are on the leaderboard for the year and for all time and it becomes
00:50a bit competitive.
00:51Some GEDZ birdwatchers have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
00:56And yeah, you'll find if you talk to a lot of birders, I'm not the only person who's
00:59had that thought that this is like Pokemon.
01:02This is real-life Pokemon.
01:03Content creators like Jacob DeLeo shine a light on the vulnerable state of some species.
01:08You know, hunting down like a rare bird, critically endangered bird, but then realising how sad
01:13that actually is that there's not many of these birds left.
01:17This new generation of birdwatchers is also contributing to valuable data about the status
01:21of global populations.
01:22You know, I think that sort of digital access to birding and sharing of images on social
01:27media has been a huge drawcard for the younger generation.
01:30It's great to have that new mix coming through.
01:33Birdwatching for a greater good.
01:34Birdwatching for a greater good.
01:35Birdwatching for a greater good.
