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Despite the diversity of life around our coast our seas are under huge pressure; increasingly busy, noisy and polluted. Scotland’s whales and dolphins exist in a fragile state, threatened by a range of environmental, climatic and human stresses. The Hebridean Whale & Dolphin Trust (HWDT) believe that evidence is the foundation of effective conservation. They monitor and protect whales, dolphins, porpoises, and basking sharks in areas of critical habitat across Hebridean seas.
The Challenge
In the summer of 2017, the Hebridean Whale & Dolphin Trust wanted a way to make it easier for people to submit sightings’ reports and interact with the data.
Faced with logging and managing reports from diverse sources, HWDT sought a streamlined solution that was both mobile friendly with a powerful system behind it to categorise, manage and export their data and findings.
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Our Solution
Back then, Whale Track was seen as a first of its kind, making use of the technology we all carried in our pockets to allow anyone to quickly and easily record sightings of marine animals.
The app uses GPS to accurately track excursions at sea and record locations of sightings and, crucially, works without phone signal or WiFi so that sightings can be recorded even in the most remote areas.
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The Impact
The Whale Track app and website was an immediate success and a community of citizen scientists quickly formed and grew and became known as the Whale Track community.
Just a year on from its launch, the app had already helped to almost double the rate of sightings reported to HWDT and Whale Track was named as a finalist in the Best Environment project category in the 2018 National Lottery Awards.
In the spring of 2024, Whale Track reached some incredible milestones:
- More than 6,000 registered users
- 1500 active reporters
- Over 10,000 reports of cetaceans recorded last year in Scotland for the first time in the 30-year history of the trust
- An honorary mention in the EU Prize for Citizen Science 2023
Read the News article
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“A lot of people tell us that they think it is the best sightings app out there and that’s why they like to use it.
One of the reasons why we removed the geographical boundary in 2022, is because we had so many people in the rest of Scotland who wanted to record their sightings on Whale Track which is wonderful.”
Sadie Govert
Education and Sightings Officer
HWDT
“A lot of people tell us that they think it is the best sightings app out there and that’s why they like to use it.
One of the reasons why we removed the geographical boundary in 2022, is because we had so many people in the rest of Scotland who wanted to record their sightings on Whale Track which is wonderful.”
Sadie Govert
Education and Sightings Officer
HWDT
