SharkApp

🦈 Save the sea ... saving the sharks!

📸 Collaborate with the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station via SharkApp reporting shark sightings and / or catches!

Sharks are not sea monsters, but delicate predators, endangered columns of marine ecosystems, today more than ever in danger of extinction. To save them, you need to know them, but there is still a lot to do. Now you too can help the researchers of the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station with SharkApp, which will allow you to report shark sightings or catches in any Italian maritime area, thus helping to create a database of the geographical distribution of many species still little known. Information sheets on all the shark species reported so far in our seas will allow you to get to know better these mysterious and vulnerable fish, which are now seriously threatened with extinction.

SharkApp is a smartphone application developed by the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station (SZN) - National Institute of Biology, Ecology and Marine Biotechnology, The purpose of this app is to acquire shark reports in Italian seas and to inform all citizens and stakeholders on these extraordinary marine predators, both fascinating and endangered. SharkApp, in addition to allowing the acquisition of shark sightings and the consequent construction of a sighting map, also presents information sheets on the most relevant species of the Mediterranean Sea, also making use of the iconographic contribution of the Food and Agricolture Organization of the United Nations ( FAO) and the collaboration of some great photographers: Easy to use, SharkApp plans to send the reports both anonymously and through a registration: all data and information will be the exclusive competence of SZN and will be used for purely scientific purposes.

In detail, the objectives of SharkApp are:
1) sensitize citizens and all other stakeholders (fishermen, divers, boaters, simple swimmers, etc.) on the urgency of conserving the marine ecosystem from the numerous threats besieging it, starting with its unjustly feared and most vulnerable animals ;
2) to inform on the richness in terms of biodiversity of sharks present in the Mediterranean, through a detailed part of e-learning, with summary cards for each species of the Mediterranean and a rich glossary;
3) acquiring information on the reports / catches of sharks by citizens and all stakeholders of the sea, which will allow to increase on one hand the scientific knowledge on these organisms and on the other the awareness (and responsibility) towards the marine environment of non-professionals.
SharkApp will soon be translated into other languages, and aims to become an active and institutional tool (while always remaining free, of course) of "Citizen science" dedicated to sharks and rays from all over the Mediterranean Sea, through the strengthening of the bond with international entities operating in the area, such as FAO.