WWF GhostDiver – Application for cleaner and safer oceans

More than 12 million tons of plastic end up in seas and oceans worldwide every year. Approximately one third of this waste consists of lost fishing equipment, becoming a silent killer of submarine life. Sea animals, including endangered species, are at risk of slow and painful death by being captured in lost fishing nets, threatening the whole ecosystem. How to prevent this? That is what the German branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) approached us with.

How to clean the seas and oceans from lost fishing equipment and reduce the extinction of more than 340 animal species? The original application served WWF only as a regional prototype. Thus our task was to build an application from scratch and create a reliable tool for reporting and fishing out fishnets, making the process as easy as possible for the divers and rescuers.

We created an app that allows WWF to collect sonar data and investigate suspicious locations. Divers, fishermen, and other locals can easily report positions with lost fishing equipment, plan a route to verify suspicious locations, and add reports, including photos and videos. All reports are checked by the professional team of WWF, which also takes care of their safe removal.

With global ambitions to clean seas and oceans around the world and prevent the death of up to 650 000 animals per year, we have developed the app in Flutter, which enabled us to deliver in a very short time – saving the world cannot wait. As a result the database of suspicious locations is available to the environmentalists not only in German waters, but also around the world.