Terms of Use

Watch wildlife responsibly

This is the most important section of these terms. Cetaceans in UK waters are protected by law: it is a criminal offence to intentionally or recklessly disturb them under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. PodLog is provided to help people watch and record marine wildlife, and it must not be used to pursue it.

You must not use information from this site to approach, pursue, feed, encircle or otherwise disturb marine mammals, and you must not use it in connection with any activity that would harm them. If you are on the water, follow the UK Marine Wildlife Watching Code for your area. We may remove content and suspend accounts where we believe the service is being used to disturb wildlife.

The limits of our forecasts

The heatmap, pod tracks and predicted routes are statistical estimates generated from crowdsourced sightings and environmental data. They are frequently wrong. Animals move unpredictably, sightings are sparse and unevenly distributed, and an area highlighted on the map does not mean animals are there.

Nothing on PodLog is navigational, safety or professional advice. Do not rely on it for decisions about going to sea. Always use proper charts, forecasts and judgement, and check official sources for weather and sea conditions.

Your account

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for activity that happens under your account. Please tell us promptly at privacy@podlog.co.uk if you believe your account has been compromised. You can delete your account at any time.

Reporting sightings honestly

Sighting data is only as good as the reports behind it, and other people rely on it. When you submit a sighting you confirm that you genuinely believe it to be accurate, that it reflects something you actually observed, and that you have not knowingly misidentified the species or the location. Deliberately submitting false records, including fabricated locations, times or photographs, is grounds for immediate removal and a ban.

Photographs must be yours, or ones you have permission to upload and publish.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• post unlawful, abusive, harassing, hateful or deliberately misleading content;
• upload anything that infringes someone else's copyright or privacy;
• impersonate another person or organisation;
• attempt to break, overload, probe or circumvent the service's security or rate limits;
• scrape or bulk-extract data from the service without our written permission;
• use the service to disturb wildlife, as set out above.

Your content, and the licence you give us

You keep ownership of everything you submit. To run the service, you grant PodLog a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, adapt and publicly display the content you submit, meaning sightings, photographs and group posts, for the purposes of operating PodLog and of conservation and research. This licence continues for sighting records that have become part of the scientific record even if you later delete your account, though we will disassociate them from your name on request.

Moderation

Sightings may be reviewed automatically and by human moderators. We may edit, hide, remove or refuse any content, and may warn, suspend or ban accounts, where we reasonably believe these terms have been broken. Where we can, we will tell you why. If you think we have got it wrong, email us and we will look again.

Third-party data

PodLog incorporates sighting data from Sea Watch Foundation and WhaleTrack, and tidal and ocean data from the E.U. Copernicus Marine Service, together with base mapping from OpenFreeMap. Those datasets remain the property of their respective owners and are subject to their own terms.

Availability and liability

PodLog is provided "as is". We make no promise that it will be available, uninterrupted or error-free, and we may change or withdraw features at any time. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss arising from your use of, or reliance on, the service or its forecasts. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Changes and governing law

We may update these terms. If we do, the date at the top of this page will change, and continued use means you accept the new version. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

See also our Privacy Policy.