We have been reviewing educational, fun and entertaining websites a long time now, but today we are going to spot the sharks in real time. Yes, you read that right. We will track their all day journey and read their profile on www.ocearch.org — a data-centric site built to provide previously unattainable data in the ocean.

As you open the Ocearch site, you will see the world map with hundreds of dots on various locations of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. These dots represent tagged sharks present at the spot in real time.

So why tagged? Of course, for the research purposes for scientists and students, however, now anyone can see these tagged sharks swimming in the oceans.

Clicking any dot will open a pane at the right side of the screen with a brief intro of that shark, its picture, name, weight, height and activity throughout the week, month or even years. You can even zoom in on a specific location to see which sharks are hanging out there and where they’ve been swimming and traveling for the past year. Reading all the simple, yet brief, data will put you in awe about these giant creatures. Chances are you will develop interest in specific sharks and thus will track its activity all day long.

Apart from that, recently the site has also started getting the data of other tagged animals like turtles, dolphin, whale, seal, bear and alligators in their database. You can click the dots on the map with a little picture of these animals.

While it is not possible for us to spot these animals as we go to the beach or in the open sea, but seeing them in real time is unique in itself.

The good thing is all the tracking data on Ocearch is open-sourced to the public via the Ocearch tracker and can be used for educational and research purposes.

Lets spot sharks in real-time at https://www.ocearch.org

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 7th, 2019