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Mobile GPS for fishermen (India) - Fishery Platform

Android Mobile GPS application that replaces the regular GPS

Xavier Lawrance 1 Stories

Mobile GPS for fishermen (India) - Fishery Platform

Saturday February 18, 2017,

5 min Read

Odaku is a Mobile GPS bringing solutions to the fishermen community in India. Being a fishermen, we have created Mobile GPS to help the fishing industry in India. Here are various issues faced by fishermen and how we can give solutions that is embed into the GPS.

Problem

Unable to follow the Regulatory Measures – The Government has banned few areas for fishing for protecting the Marine Resources. Areas include Closed Fishing Area and Marine Protected Area (MPA). This is due to the current GPS do not provide these information.

Spatial Closure – These are areas that are defined by Government for Traditional Vessels & Mechanized Vessels. Some of the states have defined distance where Mechanized boats cannot do fishing but only smaller boats can do it. These are the regions, which always creates tension between fishermen. The main root cause is lack of knowing the border, which the current GPS does not provide.

Over Fishing– There is over exploitation of fishing near seashore and fishermen do not want to go for deep sea fishing due to Fear of unknown location and loss of money incase if they are not success in getting fish.

Lack of Data – Even though the Government provides information such as weather, tide info and PFZ, it does not reach the fishermen. The provided content is not presented for them well.

Catch Data - There is no way for them to keep record of what is being caught, where is being caught and how is being caught.

Border/Geofence issues – We have international border issue.

Limited storage on data like waypoints or tracks on the current GPS.

Loss of data when the GPS gets damaged. Hence fishermen need to have all their data to be written in notebook and use for reference.

Loss of Fuel due to searching for fish stocks or lacking of information such as waypoints, etc.

Solution

GPS is a basic tool that is needed by every fisherman who goes to sea. Odaku comes with this basic tool along with many other features for the fishermen. Odaku is a fishery platform for fishermen with complete solutions for their daily activities. Having seen the above opportunities, we have come up with solutions that can help the fishermen. We have closely worked with the fishermen on their requirement and created this product for the fishermen.

Geofence - Since India had a big coastal line and there are lots of local Geofence for fishing. These Geofence can be defined at the Cloud level and people can download these regions into this GPS. This solves lots of tensions between fishermen.

Spatial Closure & Environment Protection – The Government can define the Geofence region and fishermen can download those Data so that when they approach the area, they become aware of it and the app alerts them

Catch Report – Gives the data analytics that can be used by fishermen to target regions for fishing.

Tools that Helps in decision Making - Fishermen make decision based on the data they have. The app gives many tools to make decision while fishing. This increases the chances of catching more fish.

No need of internet or GSM Sim card - The app works offline on any Android Device with our hardware GPS Engine board. Fishermen can use their smart phone or Tablets. This becomes a cost effective for them.

Unlimited storage and Cloud backup – Taking the advantage of the Smart phone’s data storage, the number of records that can be stored is huge. The data also can be used to back up in Cloud. Even if the phone or Tablet gets damaged, the fishermen can download their data from the Cloud. Hence they do not need to maintain their notebook anymore.

Share data & Save Fuel – Fishermen can share information such as Waypoints and Tracks among themselves. This helps them to save fuel. The current situation is that they use Echo Sounder to detect any obstacles under the sea before putting the Fishing Net into the sea. People can save these tracks and share it so they can fish without any fear

Push Notification to deliver messages timely – Send messages to the fishermen whenever new Fishing zones are available.

Our Vision

In order to help the fishermen community, The following are the three stakeholders under this platform for a successful business model.

Government– Government can provide the information such as PFZ, Tide, weather report for the fishermen using the satellite communication.

Fishermen– Fishermen can use the content provided by the Government and increase their Fish Catch giving more income and less fuel consumption.

Private Companies / Agencies – Private companies or Fishermen Agencies can sell their products directly to fishermen. Fishermen can also sell their stock directly to end customers or wholesale dealers using the platform which cuts down the middlemen and thus increasing the Quality of the fish on the supply chain.