"There's An App for That"

LOMA LINDA >> Researchers at Loma Linda University have released the first interactive global sea turtle sightings smartphone app ever developed. PhD student, Dustin Baumbach, and his advisor, Professor Stephen G. Dunbar, PhD, developed the app. The two are sea turtle researchers in the department of earth and biological sciences at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and study sea turtles through the Protective Turtle Ecology Center for Training, Outreach, and Research Inc. (ProTECTOR Inc.) in the country of Honduras. “We saw the need for people to be a part of the scientific process – to link up with us as researchers and become citizen-scientists,” Dunbar said. Dunbar has been studying sea turtles in the country of Honduras for the past nine years, and has spent much of that time working around the Islands of Roatán and Utila. While researching sea turtles in Roatán in 2014, the two developed a mapping system that allows scuba divers and snorkelers to upload photographs and information about the turtles they’ve just seen. “We discussed the idea and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could develop a smartphone app that people around the world could use to upload photos and information about turtles that could actually help sea turtle conservation researchers?’ So I set out to develop the app, myself,” says the 26-year old Baumbach. The app, named TURT (Turtles Uniting Researchers and Tourists), is the first and only smartphone app available that can map sightings information and photographs of sea turtles seen anywhere in the world. The app launches today (April 4), and is available for free at app stores for iPhones and androids. The app can be found at Google Play; it will be available within a week from the iPhone app store. For more information about the app or to download it from the Google Play store, please visit: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.esri.TURT