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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider Battery-operated 'parrotfish' wins contest for gadgets to support campaign vs illegal fishing

Battery-operated 'parrotfish' wins contest for gadgets to support campaign vs illegal fishing

Published Sep 26, 2020 03:12 pm

A battery-operated "parrotfish" has been tapped by a non-government organization (NGO) to assist in the monitoring of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUUF) activities in the Philippines.

Parrotfish SeaMate was judged as the winning entry among the 15 participants in the recently held Karagathon codefest, a hackathon event organized by conservation group Oceana to support its campaign against illegal fishing. 

The event was held in partnership with the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and the Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute.

Parrotfish SeaMate is a portable battery-operated fishing boat tracker and transceiver that forms part of a smart wireless network. The device serves as smart buoys equipped with sound detection technology and satellite systems to identify illegal entries in protected bodies of water. 

The system was proposed by the ParrotFishNet group—composed of Rey Mark Tion, Allan Bajuyo, Jay Tamayo, Ace Mark Gella and Diogenes Pascua. They won first place and a P100,000 prize for their entry.

According to the judges, the Parrotfish SeaMate was chosen as Karagathon winner because it "offers an ingenious, easy to use, practical and cost-efficient means to monitor fishing activities." It has been successfully pilot tested in El Salvador City, Misamis Oriental.

The second place winner is the submission from Team Hydraean, composed of Alathea Grace Del Rosario, Bryce Narciso Mecines, Francis Mago, Hunelleth Villalon and Michael Allan Corpuz. 

The group submitted a working proof concept of what they called as "Seantinel," a versatile tracking platform that can be used as an independent communication layer to gather reports of illegal fishing and even maritime incidents in municipal waters.

Third place went to the Oceans13 (Mod7) group of Ariel Doria, Asuncion de Guzman, Rutherford Belleza, Van Randolph Madrid, Zenith Arnejo and John Oneil Geronimo. 

They developed a mobile app that can track the trajectory of fishing boats, detect their fishing patterns, and store and handle all the data needed.

The second- and third-place winners received P50,000 and P30,000 in cash prizes, respectively.

Oceana vice president Gloria Estenzo Ramos said the Karagathon is an "eye opener and a living testimony to the endless possibilities of sourcing local solutions to the prevailing problem of IUUF which had and still is having impacts in the lives of small-scale fishing folk."

"The hackathon forms part of Oceana’s efforts to support the government and provide a platform where violations of fisheries laws can be detected and eventually acted upon by the responsible agencies and local governments as well as strengthen the monitoring, control and managing systems for the fisheries sector," Ramos said.

"Oceana, together with other stakeholders, have repeatedly urged BFAR to implement fully the amended Fisheries Code of the Philippines, including the very important provision to require all commercial fishing vessels to install vessel monitoring measures which has been delayed for so long," she added.

She said Oceana hopes "that the proposals of the participants will find their way in actual application of government efforts."

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