Marine mammal observer (MMO) shift report app
On a seismic or piling vessel, the marine mammal observer watches the observation and shut-down zones, logs every sighting, and calls pre-start delays, soft-starts, power-downs and shut-downs. The operator and the regulator read the shift report for one question: was every mitigation action triggered when the conditions said it should be? A watch log kept in a notebook makes that hard to show.
Built for offshore contractors running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample MMO shift report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
MMO shift report
Daily MMO report — Day 14
- Vessel
- Fictional survey vessel, 3D seismic program
- Watch
- 05:40–19:10 (two observers, alternating)
- Zones
- Observation 3 km; low-power 2 km; shut-down 500 m
| Time / event | Detail | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 06:10 — pre-start watch | 30 min, no whales sighted | Action: Soft-start |
| 09:42 — humpback pod (3) | First seen 2.4 km, closing to 1.6 km | Action: Power-down |
| 10:35 — pod outside 2 km | Last seen 2.8 km heading south | Action: Resumed |
| 15:20 — dolphins bow-riding | Common dolphins, not a shut-down trigger | Action: Logged |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the MMO shift report where your template puts it.
Watch effort
- Observer on watch
- Start and end time
- Beaufort sea state
- Visibility and glare
- Source status (on, soft-start, off)
Per sighting
- Species or group
- Number of animals
- Distance and bearing at first and closest approach
- Behaviour
- Photo
Mitigation
- Action taken
- Time ordered
- Time resumed
- Zone breached
Standards the report works to
- EPBC Act Policy Statement 2.1 (2008)Interaction between offshore seismic exploration and whales: Industry guidelines
- Sets the observation, pre-start, soft-start and shut-down procedures the report shows were followed.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the MMO shift report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the marine mammal observation form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your sites, transects and plots
Enter sites, transects and plots once, as a register. Every one of your species observations and survey events then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The MMO shift report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a MMO shift report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The report concludes no threatened species were recorded; the survey event on Transect 3 carries an observation that says otherwise.
Checks a ecology framework usually carries
- Survey effort described meets the guideline for the species being assessed
- Every species in the results table is carried through to the discussion
- Weather, season and access limitations are recorded, not left implied
- Each approval or offset condition is addressed explicitly
Questions
- Can every sighting link to the mitigation action it caused?
- Sightings and mitigation actions are separate rows that can reference each other, so the report shows which sighting triggered each power-down.
- Does it work at sea without internet?
- Yes. Field capture is offline, and the day’s watch syncs whenever the vessel has a connection.
- Can the end-of-swing report combine every daily report?
- Daily shifts can be linked to one job, and a report template can loop over all of them to total effort, sightings and mitigation events.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other ecology work we cover
- Biodiversity offset monitoringOffset site report
- Bird utilisation surveysBird survey report
- Camera trap programsCamera trap data report
- Coral reef surveysReef health report
- Fauna spotter catcher logsSpotter catcher shift report
- Fauna surveysFauna assessment report
- Fish surveysFish assemblage report
- Flora surveysVegetation assessment report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your MMO shift report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.