Shark alerts to be issued to swimmers’ watches via Aussie app

Shark sighting alerts could soon reach swimmers and surfers while they are still in the water.

Shark alert platform Dorsal has developed new technology to close gaps in existing warning systems, by combining public shark sightings with official alerts.

The community-powered app then pushes sightings out to users in near real time.

Former professional surfer and Dorsal co-founder Sarah Beardmore described the platform as an added layer of information rather than a replacement for government-backed shark monitoring.

“I think the official programs are amazing, but this is just a supplement* and an additional layer,” Ms Beardmore told media outlet NewsWire.

She said with more people in the ocean than ever — and with drones, smartphones and thousands of regular beach users feeding in reports — more people were also watching the water.

For Dorsal, the aim is simple: to help people make better decisions before they paddle out or dive in.

Ms Beardmore said the app allowed people to measure practical risk, with beach users able to weigh up recent sightings and decide whether to stay, wait or head elsewhere.

“The knowledge is kind of the power and the power is in the knowledge,” Ms Beardmore said.

She pointed to her own habits as a surfer, saying that if there were multiple reports at one beach in NSW’s Byron Bay, she would simply drive further south and surf somewhere else.

One case that stayed with her involved a reported shark incident at North Lighthouse Beach in Ballina.

Ms Beardmore said within about an hour, there was another shark interaction nearby and a separate sighting of a shark of the same species and similar size at another beach about 2km away.

For Ms Beardmore, who lives nearby, that was enough to stay out of the water that day.

On another occasion, she was contacted directly by someone in hospital after a shark incident. They wanted to alert Dorsal because they did not know who else to contact.

“All he wanted was to get a message out to warn the rest of the community. That’s the true spirit of what this app is about,” she said.

The company is now building a smartwatch app so alerts can reach people while they are still in the water.

“We’re doing a wearable in-water alert, so we’re going to do a watch app that will enable essentially those drone reports and everyday user reports to get to people who are in the ocean and on their surfboard, because obviously their phone being on the beach isn’t that much use in those moments,” she said.

The watch app will matter most in the hours when beachgoers are still in the water but official shark surveillance may have stopped.

Ms Beardmore pointed to dawn, dusk, remote beaches and quieter stretches of coastline as some of the biggest blind spots in the current system of shark surveillance.

“The drone programs are only on for a certain amount of hours,” she said.

At less populated and more remote beaches, and outside scheduled drone operations, she said that community reporting becomes even more important for people already in the water or about to head in.

Dorsal originally launched after shark incidents in northern NSW in 2015, when people had seen sharks but had no clear way to report it or warn others quickly.

Since then it has built a sizeable audience, with hundreds of thousands of app downloads, more than 627,000 social followers and 255,000 email subscribers.

Over summer 2025-26, it became the second most downloaded app in Australia’s free sports category, behind the Australian Open.

The platform is free to use, but also has a paid subscriber option for ad-free access, photo and video on reports, and personalised beach alerts.

To fund its next stage, including drone integration, surf intelligence tools and the smartwatch rollout, Dorsal is opening an equity crowd-funding* raise on Birchal*.

For Ms Beardmore, success comes down to getting better information to more people, faster.

“The more people who are using Dorsal, the more Australians can feel safer and make those informed decisions,” she said.

POLL

GLOSSARY

• supplement: an additional thing
• equity crowd-funding: when businesses collect small shares of money from a large group of people online in order to help them set up or expand their business. In exchange for their money, the people get a small share or part-ownership in the company
• Birchal: crowd-funding platform

EXTRA READING
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Stay safe from sharks this season
Brave surfer’s one-legged ride

QUICK QUIZ
1. In what way is the Dorsal app powered by the community?
2. How will the smartwatch feature help to close the gap of current shark surveillance?
3. How will Dorsal fund the expansion of the app to include smartwatch notifications?
4. Which free sports app was the most downloaded during the summer of 2025-26?
5. How many followers does Dorsal have on socials?

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Get it right?
How do you think that an app like Dorsal could make sure that the information that they get is accurate? Write down and describe at least three actions or features that could be included.

Time: Spend at least 15 minutes on this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Health and Physical Education, Design and Technologies

2. Extension
Dorsal is designed to give people information about shark activity. Can you think of another safety issue that a similar app could help us with? Identify the issue and then create a plan or write a description of an app that could help keep people safer. Use Dorsal as an example or your inspiration!

Time: Spend at least 30 minutes on this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Health and Physical Education

VCOP ACTIVITY
BAB it!
Show you have read and understood the article by writing three sentences using the connectives “because’’, “and”, and “but” (BAB). Your sentences can share different facts or opinions, or the same ones but written about in different ways.