Wednesday, March 05, 2014

The Best Animal Tracking Maps


The WWF Species Tracker is a Google Map dedicated to tracking the movements of a number of animals around the world. The map includes the tracks of a number of polar bears, marine turtles, yellowfin tuna, bowhead whales, jaguars and a narwahl whale.

You can select each individual animal on the map and not only view the animal's movements but read a journal of the animals movement and behavior over the last few months. Each track includes time stamps along its path, allowing you to see when it passed through each location, and a number of 'information' markers providing analysis of the animal's progress.


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.


The Nova Southeastern University Oceangraphic Research Center are using Google Maps to track a number of sharks around the world.

The Shark Tracks map allows the user to view the individual shark's movements over the last seven months. The map also includes the option to view an animated track of each shark's journey.


Ocearch are tracking the position of a number of sharks off the coast of South Africa. The Global Shark Tracker allows anyone to observe the navigational pattern of the 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.

Currently 34 sharks are being tracked in total and you can follow them all with the tracker. 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.

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