Mapping the Life of Eric Livingstone Seagull

LifeWatch are currently tracking gulls and march harriers using GPS units and CartoDB powered Google Maps. 30 birds were tracked over the spring and summer.

Unfortunately the live real-time map is no longer of much use as the birds have flown south for the winter and are out of range of the project's antennas. However LifeWatch has created some interesting maps using the data tracks from the spring and summer.

These include an intensity map of Eric, a Lesser Black-backed Gull, breeding in the colony of Zeebrugge. The map shows Eric's movements over two months, revealing Eric's most visited locations, including his frequent day-trips to Bruges. Using the same data LifeWatch also created a map showing his paths per day. In this map Eric's daily flight paths are colored by day to show how his flight pattern changed over the two months.

Vizzuality's Torque library was also used to create a fascinating animated map showing all Eric's movements over the two months in just 150 seconds.


The Bear Tracker from Polar Bear International is tracking the movements of polar bears in Hudson Bay.

The Google Map shows current and past sea ice levels on Hudson Bay, and also the rough locations of polar bears. Users can click on the individual polar bear markers to view the bear's track and also use a time slider control to see the locations of the bears over time.


Ocearch's Global Shark Tracker has extended its shark tracking app to track sharks off the east coast of North America.

The Global Shark Tracker allows anyone to observe the navigational pattern of 47 tracked sharks. The sharks have been tagged with satellite tracking technology for the purpose of shark conservation and their movements can be followed on this Google Maps based tracker. The Global Shark Tracker is now tracking 35 sharks off the coast of South Africa and 12 off the east coast of America.

The tracker includes a number of useful filters which allows the user to search for individual sharks by name or to view the trails of just male or female sharks or of mature or immature sharks.


The Nova Southeastern University Oceangraphic Research Center are also using Google Maps to track a number of sharks off the east coast, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere around the world.

The Guy Harvey Research Institute Tracker allows the user to select the sharks to view on the map by location or by individual shark name.