Spot A Shark focuses on the critically endangered greynurse sharks that exist along the East Coast of Australia with the goal of increasing their protection. Spot A Shark is a website that allows users to upload their photographs and videos of Greynurse Sharks along the East Coast of Australia to a database, from which Al-powered computer vision software performs computerised pigmentation spot matching on photographs to determine the individual animal. This is a non-invasive system that helps researchers identify individual animals and perform big data analysis on population structure, whether the population is stable, declining or increasing, site fidelity, migration patterns, and review health of sharks (e.g. gather data on number seen with hooks). This information will be used by Spot A Shark researchers, as well as international partners, to facilitate management decisions aimed towards providing long-term protection for the GNS and their habitats. Users simply need to share their photos. If the shark is new to the database, they will also get to name it!
