University of Southampton Develops Mobile App to Help Fishermen Optimize Their Fishing Days
Researchers in the UK and India have joined forces to support small-scale fishing communities in the Indian state of Kerala, as they face challenges of diminishing fish stocks.
Fishers in the state face similar challenges as seen globally like climate change affecting resource availability, habitat degradation, marine pollution and issues related to enforcement.
The research team, led by the University of Southampton, has developed a mobile phone app (android) to help fishermen optimise their fishing days.
The app enables fishers, organised into small groups, to communicate easily. When a boat goes out in search of fish, the app allows users to share the GPS location of where fish is available, saving other fishers in the group time and fuel.
Fishermen are also encouraged to share photos via the app showing the condition of the sea and of their catch. The research team will use this data to better understand the state of the ocean in that region, to support the development of policies for more sustainable fishing.
Dr Bindi Shah , Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Southampton, is leading the work. She said: “Along with our Indian partners, we have researched the issues that fishing communities in Kerala have faced in the past five to 10 years, and the impact that climate change and biodiversity loss has had on them.
“We’ve worked with fishery technologists, engineers, and computer scientists to better understand how climate change is impacting the seas and how this has affected availability of fish species that the fishermen caught, especially in the traditional sector.
“The challenges of climate change and the anthropogenic factors are not going away, so we need to give marginalised communities accessible tools so that they can mitigate some of those challenges.”
Dr Shah has worked with Paul Kemp , Professor of Ecological Engineering at the University of Southampton, Dr Bethan O’Leary , Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, and Dr Deepayan Bhowmik , Associate Professor in Data Science at the University of Newcastle. The UK-based team has collaborated with researchers at the ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) Central Institute of Fisheries Technology in Kerala, India.
The app has been trialled with fishing communities in Kerala and is being finessed before it is rolled out for wider use in the region.
Dr Shah said: “The key hope for the app is that it will stabilise incomes for the fishing community, saving them fuel costs and time costs, and helping them to get the best price for their fish.”
Recommending policy changes
The team has prepared recommendations for local government to support small-scale and sustainable fisheries. They highlight the challenges fishing communities have faced over the past decade, including:
- a higher frequency of extreme weather events
- an increase in marine mammal interactions during fishing operations damaging fishing gear and increase in non-targeted species like jellyfish in catches
- a competitive disadvantage due to the vessels landing fish first commanding higher prices
- the need to upgrade and maintain fishing-related infrastructure, such as harbours
- loss of mangroves.
The brief for policymakers includes recommendations for practical and financial support for small-scale fishing communities, as well as infrastructure development and climate change mitigation measures. These include compensation for fishers, incentivising marine litter collection and recycling, and implementing mangrove replanting projects.
Recommendations for future research include developing suitable user-friendly sensors to monitor the impact of climate change on local ocean water quality, research on the impact of dredging, and encouraging fishers to use the mobile phone app to monitor their catches.
The policy briefs will be disseminated to relevant stakeholders, and to other researchers working with small-scale fishing communities across the country.