The Whale Trail is a Seattle-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire appreciation and stewardship of whales and our marine environment by establishing a network of viewing sites along the whales’ trails through Puget Sound and the coastal waters of Washington, Oregon, California and British Columbia.

Under the direction of founder Donna Sandstrom, the Whale Trail is being created by a consortium of partners including NOAA Fisheries, Washington Dept of Fish and Wildlife, People For Puget Sound, Seattle Aquarium, Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, and the Whale Museum.

I have worked with The Whale Trail for a number of years on a variety of projects. One project was the development of a mobile application that allows the public to report and share marine mammal sightings. Features include:

• Automatic logging of geo-data and direction of travel
• Photos can be included in sighting reports
• Automatically share sightings on social media
• View recent nearby sightings
• Administrators can dynamically set various "management polygons" for special treatment (e.g. off-limits for sightings)
• An administrative back-end for generating reports and analyzing sighting statistics

I developed a beta version of the app for the iPhone to demonstrate at NOAA's Regional Headquarters in Seattle and am currently working on a web app version that will run in browsers on any smart device.