A marine life database and educational platform that combines my expertise as a PADI Divemaster and scuba diver with my skills as a full-stack developer. The platform features detailed species information, interactive data visualizations, and AI-powered content generation. Most of the underwater photography showcased on the site was captured during my own dives.
Project Overview
Red Sea Creatures is an educational resource for marine enthusiasts, researchers, and divers. It offers species taxonomy, habitat details, and visual insights. The site is designed to be user-friendly, fast, and scalable while showcasing real underwater photography.
Challenges
- Managing a large dataset of marine species, their scientific classifications, and ecological information.
- Ensuring users can quickly search, filter, and explore species data efficiently.
- Hosting high-resolution images & interactive charts while keeping load times fast.
- Automating species descriptions, translations, and content updates dynamically.
- Serving high-quality images with optimized performance for global access.
Solutions
- Developed a highly optimized, SEO-friendly front-end using Next.js & React.
- Implemented Sphinx Full-Text Search for fast, efficient search capabilities.
- Created interactive graphs and charts using Highcharts to display marine life insights.
- Integrated OpenAI API & Gemini API for AI-powered descriptions & translations.
- Hosted all high-resolution underwater images on AWS S3 + CloudFront for optimized delivery.
- Enhanced the media library with additional marine life photography using Flickr API.
- Ensured high availability & performance by hosting on DigitalOcean with a containerized Docker environment.
- Automated deployments and maintenance using GitHub Actions for CI/CD.
- Implemented error tracking and user analytics using Sentry & Google Analytics.
Key Features
- Comprehensive Marine Database - Detailed species profiles, taxonomy, and habitat information.
- Interactive Data Visualizations - Dynamic charts powered by Highcharts for marine life trends.
- Advanced Search - Full-text search using Sphinx for fast and efficient species lookups.
- AI-Powered Content - Automated species descriptions and translations via OpenAI API & Gemini API.
- Media Integration - Flickr API for additional image resources, AWS S3 + CloudFront for optimized photo delivery.
- Scalable Deployment - Hosted on DigitalOcean with Docker for efficient scaling.
- CI/CD & Monitoring - GitHub Actions for automated deployments, Sentry & Google Analytics for tracking performance.
Project Info
Technologies
frontend
Next.jsReactNext-Auth
backend
MySQLPrismaNode.js
search
Sphinx Full-Text Search
data Visualization
Highcharts
ai And Apis
OpenAI APIGemini APIFlickr API
hosting And Deployment
DigitalOceanAWS S3CloudFrontDocker
dev Ops And Ci Cd
GitHub Actions
monitoring And Analytics
SentryGoogle Analytics