Beam Reach is a Washington social purpose corporation founded in 2017. That year, we coordinated a Kickstarter that raised $20,000 to help the Orcasound hydrophone network by developing a web app that makes it easy for citizen scientists to listen for whales. This technological innovation was our contribution to the Orcasound hydrophone network, a cooperative effort of many of our NGO partners to “listen for whales” in the Salish Sea.
In the summer of 2017, we initiated the Orcasound open-source hardware and software project and coordinated the launch of Orcasound 1.0 in November, 2018. Thanks to an amazing community of Orcasound hackers in Seattle and around the world, in November, 2019, we began beta-testing the more-interactive Orcasound 2.0. In May, 2020, we coordinated the launch of the new Orcasound web app that lets citizen scientists tag audio data and take conservation actions as they listen live.
In January, 2020, Beam Reach was honored to be selected as one of 11 start-up companies participating in the inaugural Maritime Blue Accelerator. We are excited to deepen our connections with the maritime industry in Puget Sound, learn with other founders, and introduce investors to conservation challenges we help solve in the Pacific Northwest.