The Bahamas Marine Mammal Research Organisation (BMMRO) was established to protect and conserve marine mammals using scientific research and educational outreach.
BMMRO has succeeded in changing policy, putting the Marine Mammal Protection Act into place which prohibits the capture of marine mammals in the Bahamas. Their research on Beaked Whales was able to prove that they strand coincidentally with Navy sonar testing, resulting in a decrease in the amount of noise made by warships and submarines in the ocean. But policy changes like this require irrefutable data, and BMMRO’s data collection and management were all paper driven, and so progress was frustratingly slow.
Their paper-based process meant their data was both unable to fulfil its potential, and at risk of loss; environmentally (working on boats, and in an area vulnerable to hurricane devastation) and through infrequent backups.
Thoughtworks partnered, remotely, with BMMRO to create an open source data collection app which “Catapulted us into the modern era” according to Dunn.
The app has so much potential... because of its accessibility, the vision is that this could become something that other NGOs could adopt and also we could connect to Citizen Science.
The app has so much potential... because of its accessibility, the vision is that this could become something that other NGOs could adopt and also we could connect to Citizen Science.
