Dolphin Watch

A citizen science project to record sightings of Swan and Canning River dolphins

The Dolphin Watch App is a software application that allows you to upload data to the River Guardians and Coastal Walkabout websites.

Dolphin Watch is an easy-to-use smartphone app designed to encourage people of all ages and abilities to record sightings of the resident Swan and Canning River dolphins, and for people who are trained Dolphin Watchers to be able to perform surveys of the rivers and contribute that information to the Trust.

The app automatically takes note of the time and location (GPS) of dolphin sightings before uploading that data in real time to the Coastal Walkabout website (www.coastalwalkabout.org). Via the website, the data is freely accessible to the general public, researchers, NGOs, industry and local organisations all over the world.

Specific Dolphin Watch surveys that are undertaken are delivered to the Swan River Trust’s database of survey effort, and is used for a range of research by the organisation. You must be a trained Dolphin Watcher to be able to use this function in the app.

This app is part of the Coastal Walkabout initiative, an open access, dynamic, citizen science initiative which utilises smart phone technology and social media to engage and motivate local communities, industry, NGOs and researchers to gather scientific observations within the coastal, estuarine and near-shore environments.

Coastal Walkabout strives to provide community, industry and researchers with easily accessible tools and data to contribute to the monitoring and management of their environment.

The philosophy behind Coastal Walkabout was conceived through collaborative discussions between Marine Ventures Foundation (USA), Duke University (USA) and Murdoch University. This app was developed by Gaia Resources with input from the River Guardians program.