What Are They?

The little glass fish is our signature item or calling card. For an explanation of what a signature item is please see Signature Items.

What Do I Do With Them?

Our little glass fish are meant to be kept and enjoyed. Some geocachers collect a fish in each of the available colors.

Our fish are also trackable like Travel Bugs. We enjoy seeing who collects our fish. If you "catch" (grab or retrieve) a fish from a cache please log it.

In addition, we'd like to see our fish travel far and wide. If you are so inclined, please help our fish "swim through the caches of the world" by moving them to other caches and logging their "release".

The History of the Fish

We started leaving our signature glass fish in caches in November of 2003, approximately one month after we began caching. We started numbering the fish at 101. Nearly a year later we brought the tracking sofwtare online after entering in a year's worth of fish (whew!).

Over time the glass fish have changed little, however, how we number them and package them has changed.

• Originally we hand numbered the fish using a permanent black marker. That was fun - not. And guess what - the ink wasn't permanent. So...
• We then placed a single sticker on the fish with a number on it. But we realized that cachers didn't know whose signature item the fish belonged to. So...
• We started putting two stickers on the fish - on one side the number and on the other side our geocaching name 'digitalfish'. Well, that made it clear but peeling and sticking two tiny stickers seemed a bit much. So...
• We combined our geocaching name and fish number into one sticker. Mo' bettah. Then our buddy Mauison dropped some of our fish in Hawaii and put them in a small bag with an explanatory note. Why didn't we think of that? (head slap) So...
• We started putting our little fish into a small ziploc back with 'traveling papers' which listed this tracking site.

The tracking software was developed by Digital Fish Designs and is not open source and is currently not available for purchase.

If you would like to track your own signature items please see Signature Item Tracking Site. The owner hosts signature items on that site and, in the past, has made available the source code for that signature item tracking software.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Mark Yvanovich of Marky and Joani for graciously providing the initial version of the signature tracking software. It provided the inspiration for the current application in use today.