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Its Our Ocean: Lessons Learned in

Fishackathon
Chen-Yi Tu (@crystaltu_), co-founder of Ocean Says (@oceansays_info)

2017.2.7
Epipelagic via WikiCommons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
 Maximize revenue

Fishers

Technology

Researcher/
Customers
Management

Sustainable fisheries Best bargain

No IUU fisheries
Prelude

Fishackathon = Fish + Hackathon

Hosted by Secretary of States Office of Global

Partnership (GP at State)

A public-private partnership program launched at the

same time with 2014 Our Ocean Conference
 Track 1

Bureau of Oceans
and International
Environmental and
Scientific Affairs

Track 2
 Develop usable solutions to address the problem of worldwide
overfishing

Find innovative ways to collect and analyze data, and find

solutions for unsustainable fishing practices

Capitalize on the expansion of mobile technology use across the

developing world to address sustainable fishery challenges

Create new applications and tools for use on mobile phones,

devices, and other end-solutions, which can help fishers work
smarter and more safely in sustainable fishing
The beginning: 2014 Fishackathon

5 cities in US

Problems: Create a solution for West Africa Regional

Fisheries Program (WARFP) that can register, license,
and monitor their entire commercial small-scale
fishing fleets, comprising at least 30,000 canoes
 2014 Winner:
Fish DB from UC
Berkeley School of
Information

http://blog.oceansays.info/2014/06/fishackathon-fish-db.html
 A successful pilot run, but what about next years
event?

A team used their previous work, is this fair?

2015 Fishackathon

12 domestic and international locations (Canada, Chile and

Indonesia)

Choose from one of 26 problems

Fisheries management, conservation, aquaculture, traceability

A formal Code of conduct (CC-BY-SA 4.0 for all works created

in fishackathon, terms and policy)

Devpost https://fishackathon2015.devpost.com/
Photo by our onsite observer of 2015 Fishackathon @ Vancouver
http://blog.oceansays.info/2015/06/codeforfish.html
2015 Global Winner: Fish-o-Tron
 Submissions only covered about half of the problems.
Some are too site-specific (e.g. USAID Armenia) and
too difficult to tackle

Is it possible for Taiwan to participate?

2016 Fishackathon
Issues in sustainable fisheries

Fish identification

Lost fishing gear

Internet access to
commercial fishing permit and vessel data

Compliance with marine applicable fishing law,

regulations and decrees covering regions
Problems

Consultation to both governmental and non-

governmental organisations

In the final round, only 9 problems was selected by the

experts committee
Problems
App

FINFONOAA

FishFace AppThe
Nature Conservancy Indonesia Fishery Conservation

App Global Ghost Gear Initiative

AppGlobal Ghost Gear Initiative

(Maritime Domain Awareness)

AppMarViva

Challenges

Although Taiwan is a large fishing entity, for most

people fisheries are simply far from everyday life

AIT usually works on track 1.5 (think tank to think

tank), not track 2 (civil society)
 Fisheries 101 (talks, social media and blog post)
Pre-event Tech talk (by Microsoft)
engagement City introduction on fishackathon.co
Localization of problem statements and CoD

Expects all possible questions from the

On-site participants
consultation Confidence building: its almost impossible to
have a complete solution within 3 days

Real-time event
#codeforfish
coverage
 Pre-event
engagement

http://blog.oceansays.info/2016/04/GGGI.html
Problem statements
 On-site
consultation
Github issue tracking as
consultation platform
On-site consultation
Also on-site consultation (with Ting-Chun Kuo in Vancouver)
Pitch: Lost lobster-pot warning system
Demo: Great Lake Savior
Feedback

FiCoMal: 3rd place of Fishackathon Taipei

Lessons

Aim high, but target on real problems

Engagement

Be early

By all the means

Get everyone!
 Have you ever seen any public available fisheries
statistics from Taiwan, to species level?

How to collect those data?

Responses Call for proposal from Fisheries Agency

A
2016 Fishery Taiwan Symposium: discuss on data availability

https://hackpad.com/2016-Fishery-Taiwan--5ktJowMKBbX
 2017 Fishackathon? Highly unlikely

Not just for finding solution, but also let people who
are not familiar to fisheries understand the importance
of sustainable management