ShorelineWatch
The field record for Moreton Bay's shorebird sites. Your phone. Works offline. A visit to the bay takes one to two hours at the high-tide window — ShorelineWatch records what you found when you get there.
Four things worth recording
You don't need to be a trained naturalist to contribute a useful record. Species ID helps — but a count of birds present, a disturbance event you witnessed, and a note on site condition is data that matters whether you can name every species or not.
Species and numbers
Which species, how many, what they were doing — roosting, feeding, alert, flushed. Tide stage and date fill automatically. Over time, species counts become the baseline against which change is measured.
Disturbance events
A dog off-lead. A drone overhead. A vehicle on the flat. What happened, how the birds responded, how many flushed. These records are the argument for better site management — in council submissions, management plans, and regulatory assessments.
Hardened shorelines
Seawalls, rock revetments, concrete groins — any modification that reduces natural sediment dynamics and foraging habitat. Ad hoc roost sites: birds using a rock platform or sand spit not on any known roost list. If you find it, you put it on the record.
Site condition
Access, vegetation, water quality, beach condition. Whether the site is open, restricted, or blocked. A photo of tyre tracks or damaged signage is worth more than a text description in a council submission.
A field entry from Kakadu Beach
This is a sample record — the kind of entry a Steward files during or after a high-tide visit. Each entry carries GPS, tide state, date, and time automatically. What the Steward adds is observation.
One season. What it produces.
This is what fifteen trained Stewards, working one season at Moreton Bay, put on the record. Not estimates. Not anecdote. Structured field data — site-assessed, tide-referenced, GPS-anchored — available to anyone who needs to know what is happening to shorebirds at this bay.
How to file a record
Qualify — eight questions, ten minutes
The Shoreline Assessor qualification asks eight questions on species ID, FID distances, and what to record. Pass six. Gazza marks it in real time. No enrolment required — free, open access.
Install ShorelineWatch to your home screen
It's a Progressive Web App — no App Store, no download. Open the link after qualifying, tap Share → Add to Home Screen (iPhone) or Install App (Android). It runs offline from that point. You can file a record on the flat with no signal.
Go to the site at the right tide
Birds concentrate in the two hours either side of high tide. That's the window. Arrive early, watch before you record — get your eye in first. Open the tool when you're ready to file.
Six steps — filed at the site or on the way home
Location autofills. Date and time autofill. You add: birds present and rough count, any disturbance, site condition, optional photos. Submit when back in range — the tool holds the record offline until then.
Your record joins the dataset
Every entry feeds the Moreton Bay longitudinal record. Over a season, across multiple Stewards and sites, the data becomes an argument — for site protection, for management decisions, for the conversations it informs.
"Every time you go to the bay and file a record, you're adding one more pixel to the picture of what is happening here. The picture doesn't exist without the pixels. And right now, a lot of the bay is still dark."
Two ways in
ShorelineWatch is the entry point for anyone who wants to contribute to the field record without committing to the full program. The qualification is free, ten minutes, and open to everyone.
Shoreline Assessor
Eight questions from Gazza. Pass six. Access to ShorelineWatch. Contribute to the field record from your first visit. No enrolment required, no fee, no cohort.
Already qualified? Open ShorelineWatch →
Moreton Bay monitoring sites
ShorelineWatch covers 40+ named sites across Moreton Bay — from the Gold Coast Broadwater north to Caloundra. Key roost sites below. The tool also accepts ad hoc coordinates for undocumented sites.