Coastal Walkabout

Coastal Walkabout is an open access, dynamic, citizen science initiative which utilises smart phone technology and social media to engage and motivate local communities, industry, NGOs and researchers to gather scientific observations within the coastal, estuarine and near-shore environments.

Coastal Walkabout is an easy-to-use smartphone app designed to encourage people of all ages and abilities to get out into their coastal environments and record observations of the fauna living there.

The app automatically takes note of the time and location (GPS) of wildlife sightings before uploading that data in real time to the Coastal Walkabout website (www.coastalwalkabout.org). Via the website, the data is freely accessible to the general public, researchers, NGOs, industry and local organisations all over the world.

The Coastal Walkabout app can be adapted for specific projects for community, industry, NGOs, government and researchers; collectively contributing to a massive open access database.

The Coastal Walkabout initiative consisting of:
- Smart phone app for iPhone and Android
- The Coastal Walkabout website
- A Biological Data Recording system
- Social Media platforms

Coastal Walkabout strives to provide community, industry and researchers with easily accessible tools and data to contribute to the monitoring and management of their environment.

The philosophy behind Coastal Walkabout was conceived through collaborative discussions between Marine Ventures Foundation (USA), Duke University (USA) and Murdoch University. This app was developed by Gaia Resources with input from Duke University, Marine Ventures Foundation and Murdoch University. The development of the app was made possible through funding from Murdoch University. We thank Lotterywest for funding to develop the business case for the Coastal Walkabout Citizen Science project.

Available for iPhone, iPod touch, iOS version 6.1 or higher, and also in an Android version from the Google Play store.