Ocean Spotter

If you dive or snorkel regularly, you see animals most people never lay eyes on. Ocean Spotter is the app for capturing those encounters — and over time, every single sighting becomes something bigger: a growing body of data on which marine animals turn up where, and when.

Every observation you log counts twice over. For you, as a personal logbook that won't gather dust in a drawer — and for research and conservation, which can trace patterns of distribution, abundance and migration across many individual sightings.

After the dive, you log what you saw: a photo or video, the species — picked from a database of over a thousand — plus the location, depth and how many you saw. The app generates a QR code for the sighting. Dive buddies who saw the same animal scan it with the camera and confirm your observation as eyewitnesses. The more confirmations, the more credible the sighting.

Not sure what you saw? You don't have to figure it out yourself. Just submit the sighting as unknown — other users can then suggest an identification. A kind of crowdsourced ID that draws on the community's knowledge.

The library holds over a thousand species, with scientific names, descriptions, range maps and the sighting history so far. An interactive map shows you which animals were spotted where and when, and you can filter by species, time and region — handy for planning your next dive, or for checking what actually turns up at a given spot. Dive schools, travel operators and guides appear on the map too, with their activities, tours and contact details.

To protect the animals, locations are never shown to the exact point on the map — sightings appear only as a radius around the real spot. That still gives a realistic picture of what's around at a site, without putting sensitive species at risk through precise coordinates. Species protection comes before data precision.

For divers and snorkelers, the app is a simple tool to record sightings and collect them in your own profile — effortlessly, even offline. For travelers and anyone planning a dive trip, it's an honest source for what you'll really encounter at a spot, confirmed by people who were actually there. For research and conservation, many individual observations can grow over time into a dataset that meaningfully complements professional surveys.

You can follow other spotters and see their latest sightings in your own feed, then like and comment on them. Individual sightings can be reported and users blocked — with a real moderation team behind it.

Ocean Spotter keeps working without an internet connection. Sightings, confirmations, photos and videos are cached locally and uploaded as soon as you're back online. The species library, maps of your surroundings and your own sightings are available offline too.