Whale and Dolphin Tracker1.36 - App Store

Log sightings and identify species of commonly sighted whales and dolphins from any location around the world. Whale and Dolphin Tracker provides a platform where both professional scientists and members of the public can participate in research and conservation by contributing their marine wildlife sightings. By submitting your sightings you will add to a global database that will help researchers determine patterns of species distribution and how these species interact with their environment.

Features:

-Log sightings in real-time during your trip.
-Use the built-in GPS logger to create a full GPS track of your trip.
-Upload photos from your mobile device to submit with your sighting.
-Maintain full access to your submitted data through your Whale and Dolphin Tracker account.
-View global sightings submitted by all users on a live sightings map updated in real time.

Contribute to research:

-Crowdsourcing allows for a larger scope of data collection than what is possible for dedicated researchers to achieve.
-Greater coverage in both time and space increases the likelihood of documenting rare and/or understudied marine wildlife.
-Citizen science creates ocean stewards and leads to a greater awareness of marine wildlife.

How to submit a sighting:

- Use the app to record GPS location of any sightings of whales, dolphins, and other marine wildlife.
- Help researchers account for survey effort by associating a track with each sighting. Simply start the GPS track when you depart land and stop the track upon your return. Complete GPS tracks enable calculations of sightings per distance and are valuable for research on distribution of marine animals.
- Upload photos associated with your sightings directly from your mobile device. Photos will be used by researchers to confirm species identification and will be added to photo-identification databases, where applicable.

Version History Enable updated location logic for map and sightings collection. 1.36 11/22/2025 Update location gathering function to use GPS only, so that whale sighting locations don't appear at cell tower locations. 1.33 10/26/2025 App rewrite and reorganization, HappyWhale integration for AI whale fluke matches, improved sighting and track management. 1.32 10/12/2025 More GPX track upload fixes. 1.30 06/19/2022 Offline storage and upload fixes. 1.29 03/26/2022 Added better detection and handling for situation where location permissions were not granted. Added progress indicator during species image loading sequence. 1.28 02/07/2022 Fixed sign-up failure when email address has an extra space at the end. Fixed sighting and track upload bug. 1.27 02/03/2022 Improved sign-up flow. Added new dolphin, whale, and porpoise species. Bug fixes for server connection problems. 1.26 01/25/2022 Fixed missing post-login notice. 1.24 12/06/2020 Minor fixes for sign up and password reset views. Main application functionality is unchanged. 1.23 12/04/2020 Improved offline support and server sync logic. 1.22 12/02/2020 App will now display warning when GPX Track is started and location services are disabled. 1.21 11/01/2019 New offline operation support capabilities. After an initial login when connected to the network, the application will be capable of operating offline and saving sightings and tracks for upload once network connectivity is restored. 1.20 10/31/2019 Update to add offline capabilities and work with the new version of https://log.pacificwhale.org. 1.17 10/25/2019 A few fixes were made to improve sighting location detection and GPX track building. 1.03 01/22/2019 Location service has been updated to use GPS only so that whale sighting locations are as accurate as possible. 1.02 01/12/2019 Restored the ability to upload sightings using the new version of Pacific Whale Foundation's server. 1.01 04/10/2018 1.0 01/23/2018