Gear Tracker

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Inspiration

Currently, there is an existing hotline for reporting lost fishing equipment to the EPD. However, the response time to any reports is approximately three days. By that time, much of the wildlife in that area may have been killed. We aim to reduce this response time so that we are able to target any issues within the day the equipment was lost whilst providing an accurate estimation of the location of the lost fishing gear to make it easier for related authorities to recover these fishing gears. Furthermore, we have designed our application so that it is both cost efficient and simple-to-use in order to encourage widespread usage.

What it does

This app aims to resolve the problem of ghost fishing, which is the detrimental killing of marine life due to lost, abandoned or dumped fishing gears. It provides the opportunity to counter the possibility of lost gear hurting marine life. The features include a working GPS system, which include the calculation of the general location of the lost or found fishing equipments at a given time, an automatic notification system to notify related authorities immediately, and a photo identification function.

Challenges I ran into

Given the lack of technical resources, experience and knowledge in fisheries, we found it quite challenging to develop a working app within such a short amount of time and while under constant pressure.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We were able to create the GPS feature and automatic notification system, which we believed was quite difficult to do given our lack of technical resources, experience and knowledge.

What I learned

We learned how to work together as a team and to develop a functional app within a short period of time.

What's next for Gear Tracker

We want Gear Tracker to gain a global, and more widespread attention. As we are currently in the initial stage of our app development process, we will plan to implement additional extensions and improvements in the future. Firstly, we would like to include a real time update of sea current speeds from a database from, such as the Hong Kong Observatory for the local region. This is so that we can accurately locate the area in which the lost gear will be. Secondly, we propose that we should implement an EPRIBS (emergency position indicating ratio beacon) on gears that would have a significant detrimental impact on the environment. This built-in GPS system will allow authorities to accurately track where the lost gear is. We would aslo like to include a reward/bounty system to incentivize fishermen to report lost fishing gear.