Thursday, August 9, 2007

Sharkrunners



Another cool aquatic biology post:
Discovery Channel have developed an online game that lets you track real sharks traveling in real-time.
Sharkrunners allows players to control virtual ships as they track real great whites tagged with GPS units.
Real-world telemetry data provides the position and movement of actual great white sharks in the game, so every shark that players encounter corresponds to a real shark in the real world.
Because the ships you control move at real world rates, players receive email and/or SMS alerts during the day when their boat targets a shark.
The goal of the game is to collect data on sharks in the area. You earn more "funding" depending on the type of data you collect.
It even shows trails of where the sharks have been, which I found interesting since you can see the distances these big guys go.





You can play Sharkrunners HERE.

Post written by Sonia Zjawinski from Wired.