Earlier this year, Michael Bear, an AAUS (American Academy of Underwater Sciences) Science Diver who runs a San Diego website to track Sevengill sharks, linked his website with the Shark Observation Network, run by Jeffrey Gallant of the Greenland Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Group (GEERG) and the Shark Research Institute (SRI Canada).
The online Shark Observation Network (SON) provides a means for divers and/or marine biologists around the world to enter data about shark sightings, including date, time, location, water temperature and other environmental variables, shortly after they occur into a global database. This partnership allows local San Diego divers who encounter a Sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus) to log their enounter into global database of the Shark Observation Network, which also alllows the uploading of photos and video.
There is also a Google Earth map, which allows divers and/or researchers to pinpoint the location of the sightings.
Encounters between San Diego divers and this species of shark have been on the rise in recent years and the Sevengill Shark Sightings website established by Bear is part of an on-going, long-term study on Sevengill sharks, to determine the reason for increased sightings in the San Diego area.
SON runs on a web-based application developed by Blaise Barrette, called BioApp, which allows SCUBA divers to report various types of marine life they see while diving into a database which tracks marine life by species. For more on this application, see: BIOAPP:http://www.bioapp.net/en/description.php
For more information, see:
Sevengill Shark Sightings: http://sevengillsharksightings.org
Shark Observation Network: www.sharksonline.net
Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/project.cfm?id=shark-observation-network