The European Union and Germany’s development cooperation agency, GIZ, assisted the Center for the Conservation and Eco-Development of Samaná Bay (CEBSE) in the Dominican Republic with the creation of the Samaná Whale Watcher App. CEBSE says the app seeks to promote sustainable observation of the humpback whales in the Bay of Samaná and integrate the tourists in awareness-raising and creation of educated whale watchers.
The app enables tourists to become investigators for a day, sharing their photographs with scientists and researchers.
The app was made possible due to contributions by the program Biodiversidad y Negocios of the European Union delegation in the Dominican Republic, under Syenia Paulino, division director of GIZ.
The free app was launched on 12 April 2019, shortly after the end of the 2019 whale-watching season in Samaná Bay. The whaling season in Samaná starts 15 January and ends on 30 March every year.
The app incorporates tourists and participants in whale-watching tours in Samaná Bay in the scientific monitoring of the whales. It also provides access to information on the catalog of whales, guidelines for whale watching, and a list of the boats that are authorized to carry out whale watching trips. The app links to the GPS of smartphones to indicate the geographic location of each whale sighting, characteristics of the behavior of the whales, and makes it possible to share photographs of the whales in action with CEBSE (Centro para la Conservación y Ecodesarrollo de la Bahía de Samaná y su Entorno), the local conservation entity in charge of monitoring whales in Samaná Bay.
The app will also make it possible to learn about species outside of the humpback whales that may be present in Samaná. Patricia Lamelas, longtime executive director of CEBSE, says the app resolves the need to provide quality information to visitors and allows the approach to conservation and research from a very social perspective. The application also helps more people collaborate in the conservation of these animals and support the work of our institutions “, explained Lamelas during the presentation.
This mobile application is available for Android and iOS devices and was developed within the framework of the project “Biodiversity and Business in Central America and the Dominican Republic: Contribution of the Tourism Sector for the Restoration and Protection of Marine and Coastal Biological Diversity in the Caribbean Sea,” of the European Union.
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16 Apri 2019