WhaleReport Whale Tracking Platform
The WhaleReport application lets users submit detailed whale sightings through guided mobile and web workflows, including location, species, confidence, count, behavior, comments, and supporting photos.
Marine Conservation Tech for Real-Time Whale Tracking
A marine conservation technology platform that supports real-time whale tracking, wildlife monitoring, vessel alerts, offline sightings, coastal cleanup programs, sustainable seafood traceability, and AI-powered whale health analysis across mobile and web applications.
Project Overview
The platform supports marine wildlife tracking through a real-time whale alert system delivered across web and native mobile applications. Ditstek contributed backend development, mobile frontend engineering, and QA to strengthen whale sightings reporting, vessel notifications, coastal cleanup programs, sustainable seafood traceability, and AI-powered whale health analysis. Through marine conservation technology consulting and marine data platform transformation, the solution connects observers, researchers, communities, and commercial vessel operators while helping the organization modernize conservation workflows and manage environmental data across a broad digital ecosystem.
Challenges
Limited Real-Time Whale Visibility
Large vessels faced collision risks because whale sightings were often reported manually and were not shared instantly, limiting timely route adjustments and threatening vulnerable whale populations.
Remote Connectivity Constraints
Observers working in remote marine environments often lacked mobile connectivity, preventing timely sighting submissions and creating risks around missing notifications, delayed reporting, and incomplete field data.
Offline Data Consistency
Offline reporting introduced data consistency challenges because local records and backend services had to reconcile accurately after reconnection without duplicating, corrupting, or losing conservation sighting information.
Inaccurate Zone-Based Alerts
Commercial WRAS users required precise Zone of Interest alerts, but incomplete latitude and longitude handling prevented reliable exit notifications and created risks around inaccurate geolocation calculations.
Alert & Navigation Reliability
Strict SMS length limits and inconsistent validation created communication risks, while session and token issues could block users from accessing modules or receiving critical whale alerts.
Complex Conservation Workflows
The platform also needed to manage coastal cleanup, seafood traceability, research, and administrative workflows without compromising data quality, user access, or operational consistency across conservation programs.
Solution
Ditstek strengthened the platform through marine conservation technology consulting, offline-first engineering, geolocation validation, workflow improvements, data-model modernization, and wildlife monitoring automation across the mobile, web, research, and broader conservation ecosystem.
Application & Workflow Enhancement
Ditstek enhanced existing mobile and backend workflows, resolved functional defects, validated user journeys, and strengthened application logic while preserving the established UI and underlying conservation platform experience.
Offline Sighting Synchronization
A robust SQLite-based offline queue stores temporary whale reports with retry logic and automatically synchronizes them after reconnection, preserving sighting data and preventing loss in remote environments.
Geolocation & Alert Validation
Strict schema validation was introduced for SMS formatting, geographic coordinates, and complex data structures, improving the reliability of alerts, location calculations, and user-submitted conservation information.
Production Code Quality
Code quality improvements centralized constants, exceptions, enums, and reusable logic while removing unnecessary debugging output, helping create a cleaner, more maintainable, and production-ready application environment.
Sustainable Seafood Traceability
For the Sustainable Seafood Program, inventory records were linked directly with product data, improving traceability across suppliers, locations, harvest methods, sustainability status, and stock reporting.
Marine Data Platform Transformation
The broader marine data platform transformation connected whale tracking, cleanup management, seafood programs, and AI research workflows, supporting a more integrated digital conservation environment across multiple use cases.
Features
The platform combines a whale sightings app, real-time wildlife tracking, offline synchronization, Zone of Interest alerts, environmental programs, seafood traceability, and AI wildlife monitoring within one connected marine conservation technology ecosystem.
WRAS Zone of Interest Alerting
Commercial WRAS users can define geographic Zones of Interest and receive push, SMS, email, and in-app notifications when whale sightings occur within configured marine areas.
Real-Time Marine Mapping
Real-time mapping displays sightings, alerts, research zones, and legal boundaries, helping observers and commercial users understand recent whale activity, geographic patterns, and location-specific conservation information.
Coastal Cleanup Management
Coastal cleanup and municipality workflows manage events, volunteers, locations, collected waste, impact data, and educational resources, supporting community participation, environmental reporting, and ongoing program tracking.
Sustainable Seafood Program
The Sustainable Seafood Program tracks products, suppliers, harvest methods, inventory, locations, taxonomy, and sustainability statuses while supporting reporting and visibility across participating organizations and partners.
BCAT Wildlife Monitoring
BCAT uses Roboflow computer vision to analyze aerial whale imagery, detect body shapes, place landmarks, assess health and pregnancy status, and support Whale Analysis Project research.
Tech Implementation
- Azure Notification Hub
- Azure Communication Services
- Azure Storage Blob
- Mailchimp
- Mandrill
- React Native
- Winston Logger
- Swagger
- Prisma
- Throttler
Turning Sightings into Conservation Action
The platform bridges the gap between technology and marine awareness, enabling measurable conservation outcomes while fostering a global community of ocean stewards.
Reduced Whale-Vessel Collisions
Real-time alerts to commercial vessels have helped decrease ship strikes, fostering more responsible route planning and ocean wildlife protection.
Accelerated Marine Research
Verified sightings, enriched with detailed behavioral metadata, are shared with researchers, enhancing the quality and quantity of data used for conservation studies.
Community-Driven Conservation Movement
With thousands of contributors using the whale sightings app, citizens have become vital allies in protecting endangered species through informed, participative action.
Improved Operational Safety for Vessels
Real-time ZOI alerts enable ships to reroute or adjust speeds, minimizing disruptions while adhering to marine safety and sustainability protocols.
Heightened Public Awareness
The platform doubles as an educational tool, engaging users in the importance of whale conservation and the broader mission to protect marine life.