Thanks to our friends at the Shell Museum and Island Sun for the following info:
The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum launched its innovative new Shell Museum App to a captive audience of shell enthusiasts at the island’s recent Sanibel Shell Festival.
The Shell Museum App, created by the nation’s leading shell experts at the national shell museum, is a revolutionary shell identification tool that can help shellers instantly identify more than 65 common shells found on Southwest Florida beaches, simply by snapping a picture with their cell phone camera. The App also provides an extensive, full color shell guide with images and descriptions of each shell, including photos of the living animal that created it.
From an initial set of over 35,000 shell images, the Shell Museum App uses deep learning and artificial intelligence to learn how to identify most common shells from Southwest Florida.
“It took a dedicated team and countless hours to capture the photographs needed to help build the Shell Museum App database,” said Dorrie Hipschman, executive director of the national shell museum. “We are thrilled to launch a powerful educational tool that will help the museum further inform and inspire its visitors and community, and encourage people to learn about our oceans while out enjoying nature.”
Shellers can help the App learn, too. Every photo uploaded makes the Shell Museum App better by adding to its growing knowledge of shells.
You can search for “Shell Museum” in the App Store. The Google Play store version is coming soon.
For more information, visit www.ShellMuseum.org/shell-app or email [email protected].
