Tag: digitising fisheries data

Pacific interest grows in online fishing tool

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Republished from Radio New Zealand, 8 May 2018

An online reporting tool for fisheries management is gaining popularity in the Pacific, the Pacific Community (SPC) says.

Scenery of the fishing port Photo: mtaira/123RF

OnBoard is free software developed by SPC which works on smart phones and tablets.

It improves the speed and accuracy with which boat captains can record their daily catch and upload data for fisheries managers to access.

SPC data analyst Andrew Hunt said traditional paper recording, which was still widely used, took a lot of time to process and was prone to errors.

Since OnBoard’s release last year there had been growing interest from Pacific countries for it be used on boats operating in their waters, Mr Hunt said.

“We have had nearly a hundred trips that have been reported electronically. Which is quite a good amount considering how difficult it is to get these tablets onto the boats,” he said.

“When we look at the data I think some of the positional information is more accurate because it can use the GPS onboard the tablet. And we have less problems with log sheets that can’t be interpreted.”

OnBoard was being used on boats in New Caledonia, Fiji, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia, Mr Hunt said.

The SPC was also working on translating the interface, currently available in English and French, into Chinese and other languages.

Tuna tracking technology could be hard to implement , says company

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Republished from Radio New Zealand, 10 January 2018.

A Fiji company says new technology to make the tuna fishing industry more transparent could be difficult for some Pacific island states to implement.

Tuna on the deck of a Pacific fishing vessel.
Tuna on the deck of a Pacific fishing vessel. Photo: RNZI/Giff Johnson

The firm, TraSeable, is involved in trialling the blockchain technology that tracks tuna from when it’s caught to when it’s sold.

Founder and managing director Ken Katafono said strengths of the technology are that it’s difficult to hack and no one person or entity holds all the data.

But Mr Katafono siad it was likely to be hard getting all countries to buy in and provide key data.

He said slow internet speeds could also be a problem.

“Pacific island countries they are at different areas of development and they have access to different resources and infrastructure. I think implementing technology like this can be challenging for some of them that don’t have good internet connections.”

Ken Katafono said while there’s a lot of work being done by regional agencies in the Pacific in terms of digitising fisheries data, there’s still some way to go.

He said the technology, that is essentially a digital ledger, was still at a pilot stage but was expected to be commercially available this year.