Whale Shark Visual Library

[Mr T.]

This just in from 'another place'.


Divers,

Hello all! You can help whale shark conservation and contribute to our understanding of these amazing animals by submitting your photos and log book data to the ECOCEAN Whale Shark Visual Library at:

http://www.photoid.whaleshark.org

The library is a new, web-based tool to help researchers track individual animals and collect aggregate data for conservation and protection purposes. The library has built-in e-mail, searching, matching, and image copyright protection technologies.

E-mail: Automated e-mail functionality informs you if: 1) this is a previosuly unphotographed encounter in our Library, 2) this is a previously photographed and logged animal and provides a link to all other encounters, or 3) if this submission is sighted again in the future.

Searching: The Library allows researchers to search by size, depths, date, sex, location, etc.

Matching: Unique pattern-matching functionality allows us to identify individual animals based on their left-side spot patterns (top to bottom and fifth gill to mid-dorsal fin is the matchable area). This is a new technology that we are seeing great results with. It also offers an interesting alternative to traditional invasive tagging.

Image protection: Unique image protection ensures that only researchers with secure access can view your full size submitted images (which will only be used for research purposes). Casual viewers to the site can only see smaller, low-quality images with copyright text across the image.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions. Your submissions are important, and I encourage to check out the Library and to help us log and protect whale sharks on a global scale.

Cheers,
Jason Holmberg
Shepherd Project
ECOCEAN Whale Shark Visual ID Library

Related link: ECOCEAN VisualID Library