The longer you Ocean spot, the more Badges you’ll get.
The full grid lives on the badges page, with one column per contributor and one row per badge. Below is the rundown of what’s available.
Count-based
The straightforward ones. Submit your first sighting and you’re an Ocean Spotter. Cross 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, or 500 and you join the corresponding club. Land the 100th, 200th, 300th… overall sighting and you get a Sightings Benjamin.
Time-based
Busy Week — 7 sightings in a single calendar week. Busy Month — 30 in a single calendar month. Ocean Month and Ocean Quarter reward consistency: a sighting in 4 (or 12) different weeks.
Location-based
One badge per borough. Land all five and you’ve earned the 5 Boro badge — the closest thing the project has to a finisher’s medal. There’s also a Road Tripper badge if you submit a sighting from outside NYC.
Vehicle-based
NYC’s TLC plates start with T followed by a series number. Most are T6 or T7. The T5 Club and T8 Club badges reward rarer series. Catch one from each of the five series — T1, T5, T6, T7, T8 — for the TSeries badge.
Pattern-based
Plate-shape badges, with rough odds:
- Three of a Kind — three consecutive identical digits (~1 in 10)
- Short Straight — three consecutive ascending digits (~1 in 50)
- Four of a Kind — four identical (~1 in 100)
- Full House — a triple and a pair (~1 in 100)
- NO1BOSS — a plate that doesn’t fit the standard
T######Cmold (~1 in 1,000) - Jackpot — five identical digits in a row (~1 in 2,000)
Sequence-based
Seconds — you got the 2nd or later sighting of a vehicle. Popular — you got the 5th or later. Self-Dupe — you logged the same vehicle twice.
Badges are evaluated automatically when each sighting is processed. If you got a new one, you’ll see it in the Bluesky post for that sighting.