June 11, 2014 — Few moments compare to the pressure-filled environments of hackathons, where the best developers from around the globe cram into a rented room with 24 hours to conceive, design, and create an app that wins a chance to present an idea, showcase talent, and gain invaluable exposure.
But this June, the coding community will volunteer to feel that pressure while answering a call to help solve one of the world’s greatest challenges. In conjunction with the U.S. Department of State’s “Our Ocean” Conference, the Secretary’s Office of Global Partnership brought us a new type of hackathon: the Fishackathon.
“Wait,” you must be thinking. “How does the State Department expect me to hack a fish in 24 hours? Everyone knows you need a holiday weekend for that.” The truth, it turns out, is not that funny.
One half of the fish caught for consumption comes from small-scale and artisanal fisheries, but they now face a growing list of emerging issues.
Overfishing, marine degradation, increasing fuel costs, competition from commercial vessels, and illegal fishing all confront the operations of small-scale fishermen across the globe. Worse yet, global food security and individual communities depend on the output of these fisheries for survival.
In order to address these challenges, the State Department announced its coordination of five Fishackathons on June 13 to create solutions for the sustainable management of fisheries. Applications developed during each Fishackathon will aim to help fishermen work smarter and more safely while allowing them to report catches, build the capacity for better management, and create networks to improve the monitoring of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.