Spot the species in real underwater footage.

Every species you ID helps us better understand our coastlines.

73underwater clips72species to spot56identifications

Free, no card required. Create a profile, browse the archive or view the leaderboard.

Spot the species

Pabay, Inner Sound, Isle of Skye, UK

Velvet crab
Brown crab
Hermit crab
Spider crab

How it works

Three clips a day keeps the streak alive

1 · Spot

Spot the species

Each clip is a short underwater snippet. Pick the species from a small set of likely candidates: local marine life curated by PEBL ecologists.

2 · Compare

Compare with the reference ID

See the reference identification where one exists, how the wider community guessed, and an ecological-likelihood breakdown for the site and season. Clips without a reference are worth more.

3 · Streak

Build a streak

Identify clips on consecutive days to grow a streak. Get on the leaderboard once you've submitted 10 identifications.

The catalogue

What you'll find down there

  • Sprat
    Sprat© Ulf Teghammar · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  • Thick-lipped mullet
    Thick-lipped mullet© Roberto Pillon · CC BY 4.0
  • Ballan wrasse
    Ballan wrasse© galargus · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  • Atlantic mackerel
    Atlantic mackerel© James-LaFontaine · CC BY via iNaturalist
  • Plaice
    Plaice© Liné1 · CC BY 2.5
  • Dragonet
    Dragonet© Xavier Rufray · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  • Shanny
    Shanny© Julien Renoult · CC BY 4.0
  • Common eider
    Common eider© Kent Ross · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  • Grey gurnard
    Grey gurnard© Xavier Rufray · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  • Moon Jellyfish
    Moon Jellyfish© Luc Viatour · CC BY-SA 3.0
  • Butterfish
    Butterfish© Calum McLennan · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  • European shag
    European shag© Donald Davesne · some rights reserved (CC BY)
  • Purple sea urchin
    Purple sea urchin© Rodrigo Medeiros · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  • Grey seal
    Grey seal© Lucas Rouco López · some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Reference photos via iNaturalist & Wikimedia contributors, under Creative Commons licences.

Where the clips come from

Filmed beneath real seaweed farms

Every clip is filmed under a working UK seaweed farm. Most of what these farms grow becomes a biostimulant: a natural alternative to synthetic fertiliser that helps crops resist stress and grow stronger, sprayed onto real fields by real farmers. PEBL monitors six of them for a National Lottery Climate Action Fund project with WWF.

Meet all six farms →

About PEBL

Plant Ecology Beyond Land (PEBL) CIC

PEBL is a Community Interest Company (no. 12076622, England and Wales) building accessible ecological data tools for coastal and seabed environments. FishSpotter is part of our marine monitoring programme: a citizen-science layer over real survey footage from PEBL deployments.

Visit pebl-cic.co.uk →