S.S. Tracker

A historical tracker of shark movements and locations over the last decade

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Inspiration

We wanted something tropical and fun--and what's more fun than sharks, swimming around? We also thought it would be super cool to show the movement of sharks as they migrate through the years.

What it does

With hundreds of data points for sharks, you can track your favorite shark, or simply track the general movements and locations of sharks over the past decade. Each tagged shark has a unique symbol identifier, and you can hover over any pin for the shark name + when it was taken. You can also zoom in and out, switch to satellite view, and check out the path a shark might have taken down a coastline.

How we built it

We used the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, and Node.js) along with an API from Ocearch and the Google Maps API. We took raw data from the API, parsed it in Python, uploaded the cleaned data to our database, and then served it to our application, where we used the data to create pins from longitudinal and latitudinal data.

Challenges we ran into

Since none of us have used the MERN stack before, it was quite a challenge. Connecting the database was by far the most difficult thing; it first refused to connect at all, and then it was very difficult to actually access the data due to the nature of how it was stored. Something else we also had trouble with was being able to draw lines between pins--we gave up after a while of trying to do telemetry calculations to get from point A to point B.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting the Google Maps API to really behave well was huge for us! Especially the ability to add pins from database data--that was really big for us. Getting connected to the database itself, though seemingly small, was such a big challenge for us that we were all euphoric when it finally, FINALLY worked out.

What we learned

All of us learned a whole lot about the MERN stack. Nolin, in particular, had never worked with Javascript before, but he picked it up like a pro. Will and Logan learned about document databases and how they differ from relational ones, and Eris learned about setting up and linking a full MERN web app from beginning to end.

What's next for S.S. Tracker

In the future, we hope to be able to select different sharks, select multiple sharks at the same time, display more info about particular sharks, and draw lines that show how sharks move from point to point. And in the very, very distant future...ships?

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