Recently we had an opportunity to speak with Dawn Lindsay, the Founder, CEO & Developer at Safe Ocean Project LLC about Beach Buddy App

Please share with us the backstory of what motivated you to create this app.

The motivation behind Beach Buddy is deeply personal. My family and I have always loved the ocean. I grew up around the coast in Santa Cruz, spent years diving in Monterey, and like many Californians, the ocean has always been a place of recreation and connection for us.

In October of 2010, my family happened to meet a young man named Lucas Ransom while we were in Carlsbad, California. He was kind, friendly, and had the same love for the ocean that so many of us share. My daughter and Lucas exchanged phone numbers and had been texting for a short time afterward. Then, suddenly, the messages stopped.

A week after we met him, Lucas was killed in a shark attack while bodyboarding in Southern California. At the time, we didn’t understand what had happened. Years later, my daughter was watching Shark Week and saw Lucas’s story being told. That was the moment when everything connected for us. The realization that someone we had met just days earlier had become part of such a tragic event left a lasting impact on our family.

Like many people who spend time in the ocean, I began researching what actually leads to these rare encounters. What I discovered is that these events are often not random. There are usually multiple environmental factors involved—conditions in the water, seasonal patterns, recent sightings, and other signals that are scattered across different sources of information.

That realization led to the idea behind Beach Buddy. What if people had a simple way to check the conditions, recent activity, and safety information for a specific beach before entering the water?

Beach Buddy was created to bring that information together in one place so people can make more informed decisions. The goal isn’t to create fear or demonize sharks. Sharks are an essential part of the marine ecosystem. The goal is awareness—helping people understand the ocean environment so they can enjoy it responsibly.

If technology can help prevent even one tragedy while encouraging respect for the ocean and the wildlife that lives there, then the mission behind Beach Buddy is worthwhile.

How is your app different than the rest of the market? Which unique need does it fill?

Most ocean and beach apps today focus on a single category of information. For example, apps like Surfline are widely used by surfers because they provide surf forecasts, wave height predictions, tide data, and live beach cameras that help people plan when to surf.

Other platforms specialize in specific pieces of ocean data—some focus on wind and weather forecasts, others on swell modeling, tide charts, or surf reports. While these tools are valuable, users often need to check several different apps just to understand what is actually happening at a beach before entering the water.

Beach Buddy was designed to solve that fragmentation problem.

Instead of focusing on only one aspect of ocean conditions, Beach Buddy brings multiple layers of coastal awareness together in a single platform. The app combines traditional beach information—such as weather, tides, and local conditions—with safety-focused data that most beach apps do not provide. This includes marine hazard alerts, recent shark activity, incident reports, and real-time awareness tools that help users evaluate potential risks before they enter the water.

One of the most distinctive features is the global shark activity map. While shark tracking exists in isolated forms through research organizations, Beach Buddy integrates shark sightings, incidents, and tagged animal movement into a single interactive global view designed for everyday beachgoers. This gives users context that has historically only been available to researchers or scattered across multiple sources.

Another key difference is Beach Buddy’s marine hazard warning system. Instead of simply reporting conditions, the system analyzes various signals—such as recent incidents, environmental factors, and reported activity—to highlight potential risks at specific locations. The goal is not to create fear, but to provide awareness so people can make informed decisions.

Ultimately, the unique need Beach Buddy fills is coastal situational awareness. Most existing apps help people find better waves or check weather conditions. Beach Buddy focuses on helping people understand the broader ocean environment—so they can enjoy the beach while being better informed about what is happening in the water around them.

By combining recreation, safety awareness, and marine data into one place, Beach Buddy aims to become the most comprehensive ocean-awareness app available for beachgoers anywhere in the world.

What is the coolest or most innovative feature of your app?

One of the most innovative features of Beach Buddy is its global shark activity map and marine hazard awareness system, which together provide something that has never really existed in a single consumer app before: real-time ocean awareness.

Most beach and surf apps focus primarily on recreation—things like wave forecasts, wind, or tide charts. Those are valuable tools, but they only tell part of the story about what’s happening in the water. Beach Buddy was designed to go a step further by helping people understand the broader ocean environment before they enter it.

The global shark map is a good example. It allows users to view shark activity, tagged shark movements, sightings, and incidents from around the world in one interactive map. While shark tracking data exists through research organizations, it has historically been scattered across different websites and scientific platforms. Beach Buddy brings that information together into a format that everyday beachgoers can easily understand.

Another key innovation is the marine hazard awareness system. Instead of just displaying conditions, the app highlights potential risks based on recent activity and environmental signals. The goal is not to create fear, but to provide awareness so people can make more informed decisions about when and where to enter the water.

What makes this especially meaningful is that every interaction with the app contributes to a growing body of information about coastal activity. Over time, this data has the potential to help researchers and communities better understand patterns in marine behavior and human-wildlife interaction.

Ultimately, the coolest feature of Beach Buddy isn’t just a single tool—it’s the ability to bring multiple layers of ocean awareness together in one place. By combining recreation, safety insights, and marine data, the app helps people enjoy the ocean while respecting the dynamic ecosystem that makes it so powerful and fascinating.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of the creation of this app?

The most rewarding part of creating Beach Buddy has been turning something deeply personal into a tool that can help others enjoy the ocean more safely.

The ocean has always been a huge part of my life, and the idea for the app came from a very real moment that made me start thinking differently about ocean awareness. Building Beach Buddy allowed me to take that experience and channel it into something constructive—something that could potentially help people make more informed decisions before entering the water.

Another rewarding aspect has been seeing the idea evolve from concept to reality. What started as a simple question—how can we give beachgoers better information about what’s happening in the ocean?—slowly grew into a full platform that brings together marine activity, coastal conditions, and safety awareness in one place. Watching that vision become a working app has been incredibly meaningful.

It has also been rewarding to see how people respond to the mission behind the project. Beach Buddy is not about creating fear or portraying sharks as villains. It’s about education, respect for marine ecosystems, and helping people coexist more responsibly with the ocean. When people understand that purpose and support it, it reinforces why the work matters.

Ultimately, the most meaningful part is knowing that technology now gives us the ability to share information in ways that simply weren’t possible years ago. If Beach Buddy can help raise awareness, encourage responsible ocean recreation, and potentially prevent even one tragedy, then building the app has been worth every step of the journey.

What surprised you most in your journey to create this app?

What surprised me most during the journey of creating Beach Buddy was how fragmented ocean information actually is. When most people go to the beach, they assume the information they need is easy to find—things like conditions, hazards, or recent activity in the water. What I discovered while building the app is that this information exists, but it is scattered across dozens of different sources, agencies, and websites. No single place brings it all together in a way that everyday beachgoers can easily understand.

Another surprising part of the process was how much technology has evolved to support ocean awareness. Between tagged shark tracking, drone monitoring along coastlines, environmental data, and real-time reporting systems, there is an incredible amount of information being generated. Yet most of it is still largely confined to research institutions, government databases, or specialized platforms that the average person never sees. Realizing that there was an opportunity to bridge that gap for the public was both surprising and motivating.

I was also surprised by how supportive and curious people have been once they understand the purpose behind Beach Buddy. When people hear about the mission—to improve awareness without demonizing sharks and to promote safer coexistence with the ocean—they immediately see the value in it. That reaction reinforced something important: people don’t want fear-based narratives about the ocean; they want reliable information so they can enjoy it responsibly.

In many ways, the biggest surprise was realizing how much impact a single idea can have once you start building it. What began as a question about ocean safety grew into a platform that brings together recreation, safety awareness, and marine information in one place. Seeing that vision take shape has been one of the most unexpected and rewarding parts of the journey.

How did you decide which platforms to release your app on and do you plan on releasing your app to other platforms?

We actually launched on Android first. As an independent developer building a data-driven app with many moving parts—maps, alerts, environmental data, and user interaction—it made sense to start on a platform that allowed faster iteration and testing while the system matured.

Android gave us the flexibility to refine the core features, stabilize the platform, and make sure the experience worked the way it was intended. It allowed us to gather feedback, improve the data systems behind the app, and confirm that the concept resonated with users before expanding further.

Apple was always part of the plan, but the App Store review process is more structured and requires additional compliance steps. Now that Beach Buddy has been approved on iOS, it opens the door to a much larger audience and allows us to bring the platform to more coastal communities and travelers.

The long-term goal has always been broad accessibility. The ocean is global, and people plan beach trips from all over the world. Expanding across both major mobile ecosystems is an important step toward making Beach Buddy a global ocean awareness platform that anyone can check before heading to the beach.

Which other mobile apps or technology have inspired you?

Several different apps and technologies helped shape the thinking behind Beach Buddy, particularly platforms that successfully deliver real-time environmental information in a simple, visual way.

Surfline was certainly one influence because it demonstrated how valuable reliable surf forecasts, tide data, and live cameras can be for ocean users. Surfers rely heavily on that kind of information to decide where and when to go in the water. Seeing how widely that model is used reinforced the idea that people are willing to check an app before heading to the beach if the information is useful.

Weather and environmental platforms such as Windy also helped inspire aspects of the concept. Windy does an excellent job of visualizing complex environmental data—wind, storms, and atmospheric conditions—in a way that everyday users can understand. That approach to making scientific data accessible to the public is something I admire.

Another area of inspiration has come from marine research organizations that track tagged sharks and other wildlife. Those systems were originally designed for scientific research, but they demonstrated the potential for technology to provide real-time insight into marine activity. The challenge was that the information was scattered across different research institutions and not easily accessible to the public.

What ultimately inspired Beach Buddy, though, was the realization that no single platform was bringing all of these pieces together. There were apps for surf forecasts, apps for weather, and separate websites for wildlife tracking, but nothing that combined ocean conditions, marine activity, and safety awareness in one place.

Beach Buddy was created to bridge that gap by bringing multiple layers of coastal information together into a single, easy-to-use platform designed specifically for people who love spending time at the beach.

What features do you hope to roll out to your app in the future?

In the future, one of the areas I’m most excited about expanding is live ocean visibility. Being able to actually see what’s happening at a beach in real time adds a powerful layer of awareness that complements the data already in the app. Expanding the number of live cameras—both shoreline beach cams and underwater cameras—would give users a better understanding of ocean conditions before they enter the water.

Another area of growth is working with drone operators and coastal monitoring programs. In many regions, lifeguards, researchers, and independent drone pilots already use drones to monitor surf conditions, marine wildlife, and swimmer safety. Collaborating with those operators could allow Beach Buddy to incorporate live aerial perspectives and verified observations from the water. That kind of partnership has the potential to dramatically improve real-time situational awareness at popular beaches.

Beyond cameras and aerial monitoring, we also hope to continue expanding the network of coastal data and community participation that feeds into the platform. As more beaches, researchers, and ocean enthusiasts contribute information, Beach Buddy can become an even more comprehensive source of coastal awareness.

Ultimately, the goal for future features is simple: help people understand what’s happening in the ocean before they step into it. Whether that comes from cameras, drones, improved environmental data, or collaboration with coastal communities, each new capability moves Beach Buddy closer to becoming a global ocean awareness platform.

Do you have any recommendations or advice for others wanting to create a mobile app?

The best advice I can give is to start with a problem that genuinely matters to you. Building a mobile app takes far more time, persistence, and problem-solving than most people expect. If the idea is something you truly care about, it becomes much easier to stay committed through the inevitable challenges.

Another important lesson is to focus on solving one clear problem well before trying to do everything. Many successful apps began with a very specific purpose and then expanded over time as users found value in the core idea. Starting with a focused concept helps you build something useful faster and makes it easier to refine the experience based on real feedback.

It’s also important to understand that development is only one part of the journey. Design, data sources, testing, compliance requirements, and app store guidelines can take just as much effort as writing the code itself. Being patient and methodical with those steps can save a lot of frustration later in the process.

Finally, don’t wait for everything to be perfect before sharing your idea with the world. Launching a working version and learning from real users is one of the most valuable parts of the process. Every piece of feedback helps you improve the product and move closer to the vision you originally had.

Creating an app is rarely a straight path, but if the idea has purpose and you’re willing to keep improving it step by step, it can turn into something far more impactful than you initially imagined.