The participation bar is intentionally low: if you can take a photo, you can play. Spot an Ocean, get the license plate in frame, and send it in with the borough. We do the rest — validating the plate against the NYC TLC database, logging the sighting, and posting it to Bluesky with your attribution.
There are two ways to submit, and they’re equally good. Pick whichever is faster in the moment.
Submit by SMS
This is the fastest way when you’re out on the street. The ideal submission is a single message with three things:
- the photo (plate visible)
- the plate number
- the borough
Almost every TLC plate follows the T######C pattern, so you can drop the T and the C and just send the six digits. A great message looks like:
237447 in Manhattan
Text it to 623-263-4638 — that’s OCEAN-FIND-8 on your keypad. Save it to your contacts so it’s ready next time you spot one.
You don’t have to fit it all in one message, though. Send just a photo and we’ll walk you through it — we’ll ask for the plate, confirm which Ocean you found, and log it. A few commands are handy mid-conversation:
HELP— show the help messageCANCEL— abandon the current submissionSKIP— skip setting a contributor name
Submit by web
No phone texting? Use the Submit page (also in the top nav). Upload your photo, enter the plate and borough, and add the name you’d like to be credited under. There’s an optional email field — using the same email each time keeps all your sightings tied to one contributor, so your stats and badges stay together.
Either way, once it’s in you’ll see where your sighting landed: which number it was for that vehicle, how many Oceans have been found overall, and any new badges you earned.
Follow along on Bluesky
Every sighting gets posted publicly, so the liveliest way to follow the hunt is on Bluesky:
New badges, milestones (we track percentage of the fleet found), and the occasional Ocean-in-the-wild oddity all show up there first. It’s also the easiest place to ask a question — the account is run by real people.
Find your contributor profile page
Every contributor gets a public profile at /contributor/<your-id> showing your sightings, first-finds, Ocean Points (◎p), and badges.
The easiest way to find yours: click your name anywhere it appears on the site. Your name is a link on:
- the Feed, on each sighting card
- the Stats leaderboard
- any individual Ocean’s page, next to sightings you logged
Any of those clicks lands on your profile. Bookmark it — it’s the running record of everything you’ve spotted. (Submitting with the same email, or setting a Bluesky handle, keeps every sighting attached to that one profile.)
New here? Start with these
- What is Oceans of NYC? — the whole project in two minutes
- Are there rules? — a short list, mostly common sense
- Ocean Points — how first sightings are scored
- What are badges? — the milestones worth chasing
What counts
- A photo where the plate is legible
- Taken in NYC — or anywhere, really; there’s a Road Tripper badge for out-of-town sightings
- Of an actual Fisker Ocean, not a Polestar or a Mustang Mach-E or wishful thinking
That’s the whole thing. Go find some Oceans.