Whale Report

🐋 Report a Sighting, Save a Whale! 🐋

Join the Ocean Wise Whale Report community to help reduce vessel strikes and protect marine life. Report your whale sightings, access species ID guides, and learn how your contributions make a difference. Professional mariners can receive real-time alerts to reduce the risk of whale disturbance or ship strikes.

What’s New in Whale Report 2.0:

The Whale Report and Whale Report Alert System (WRAS) are now merged into a single app! This update offers two key functionalities:

For Coastal Communities and Individuals:

- Report whale sightings, view community sightings with a 24-hour delay, and see your contributions' impact.

For Professional Mariners:

- Receive real-time alerts to avoid whale-vessel interactions.

Features for Coastal Communities and Individuals:

Whale Report:

- Enables anyone near the ocean to report whale, dolphin, porpoise, and sea turtle sightings to the Ocean Wise Sightings Network. Your reports directly aid conservation.

Real-Time Alerts for Mariners:

- When you submit sightings in real time, they’re shared with authorized commercial vessels in your area.

- Mariners can slow down or divert their route to reduce the risk of strikes and disturbance.

Conservation Data Collection:

- Sightings are reviewed and added to the Ocean Wise Sightings Network Database.

- Researchers use this data to study whale distribution and occurrence.

Additional Features:

- View community whale sightings (24-hour delay).

- Track your submitted sightings and see how they’ve triggered alerts.

- Learn to identify whale species with ID guides.

- Access Marine Mammal Regulations and Be Whale Wise guidelines.

- Record sightings offline, even when out of mobile range.

Features for Professional Mariners:

Whale Report Alert System (WRAS):

- Helps commercial mariners reduce the risk of ship strikes and disturbances.

Real-Time Alerts:

- Get notified about whale activity within 10 nautical miles.

- Alerts are sourced from sightings, infrared cameras, hydrophones, and other partner data providers.

Mitigation Tools:

- Use alerts to adjust speed, change routes, or heighten vigilance near whales.

Customizable Notifications:

- Choose how to receive alerts (push notifications, SMS, or email).

Operational Insights:

- View recent (<24 hours) whale activity in your area.

Important Notes for Mariners:

- Access to WRAS is restricted to authorized vessels like ferries, tugs, cruise ships, and freighters. Recreational vessels and ecotourism operators are excluded to protect whale safety.

- Register using your professional email address. Approval is granted within two business days.

Acknowledgements:

Ocean Wise extends its heartfelt thanks to our funders and donors for their generous support. We also deeply appreciate the invaluable contributions of our data collaborators, including OWSN observers, Orca Network, Conserve.IO, Acartia, JASCO, SMRU, Whale Spotter, and Whale Alert, whose efforts are essential to the network’s mission of protecting whales from harm.