No menu items!

COSTA RICA'S LEADING ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEWSPAPER

HomeEnvironment & WildlifeConservationFishackathon invites conservation-minded techies to help solve overfishing

Fishackathon invites conservation-minded techies to help solve overfishing

This weekend, San José and more than 40 others cities around the world will challenge groups of coders and scientists to find solutions to problems related to overfishing and fisheries management.

It’s the third annual Fishackathon, an event hosted worldwide by the U.S. Department of State, this year to coincide with Earth Day. The local organizers are the U.S. Embassy and the nonprofit conservation group MarViva.

Participants will spend Saturday and Sunday huddled in groups at Lead University in Rohrmoser, trying to come up with innovative ways to leverage smartphones and other consumer technology to respond to challenges posed by conservationists and fisheries managers.

One of last year’s winning projects was a mobile app that gives port and fisheries inspectors easy access to information on fishing laws and regulations, local species and maps of restricted fishing zones based on a smartphone user’s geolocation.

The other winning project was a mobile app allowing researchers and inspectors to take photos of landed fish with a smartphone, automatically calculate the fish’s length and upload the information to a database.

The projects developed across the globe in this year’s Fishackathon will be featured on a website where people can like, share and leave comments about the projects. You can browse last year’s projects here.

The winning team from Costa Rica will represent the country in the global Fishackathon competition, where the grand prize is $10,000 plus funding from international firms to develop the project.

Check out the Fish-a-tron, 2015 Fishackathon winner:

Trending Now

Costa Rica Opens New Pedestrian Bridge at Guayabo National Monument

Costa Rica has added a new attraction to its archaeological sites with the opening of a pedestrian bridge at Guayabo National Monument. The structure...

EU and Central America Launch First Meeting to Expand Trade Relations

The European Union and Central American nations came together for their first Association Council meeting in Brussels. They focused on growing trade and investment...

Costa Rica’s Tourism Faces Decline Amid Rising Crime and Costs

Costa Rica’s flagship tourism industry, long a cornerstone of our nation’s economy, is dealing with a noticeable downturn in 2025 as rising crime, health...

El Salvador NGO Flees to Guatemala as Bukele Intensifies Crackdown on Critics

The prestigious NGO Cristosal, which investigates corruption cases and denounces human rights violations in El Salvador, announced Thursday that it has been forced into...

Dominical to Quepos: The Costa Rican Road That Took 30 Years to Finish

The original Pan-American Highway heading south from San José once took a dramatic and daunting route. It passed through the old capital of Cartago...

Salvadoran Lawyers Fight for Rights of Trump-Deported Migrants in Secretive Prison

A small group of overstretched and outmatched lawyers is fighting for the rights of men deported by the Trump administration and held in a...
spot_img
Costa Rica Coffee Maker Chorreador
Costa Rica Coffee Maker Chorreador
Costa Rica Travel Insurance
Costa Rica Rocking Chait
Costa Rica Travel

Latest News from Costa Rica