By Sarah LaBrasca | Project Leader
The project is growing and we have two new updates to report to you.
As the project has developed and more fishermen are involved, the local telecoms company, Cherry Mobile, has been training them to use their new mobile phones. They have recorded the delightful and informative video attached. But things do not always go as easily as we would hope! We have encountered difficulties in transferring the photos from some of the fishermen’s mobile phones to the database. It is reported that fishermen have hundreds of sightings but many of these data points remain on their phones. The download is supposed to be done remotely using the 3G capabilities of the phone. In some of the villages however, the 3G is not of sufficient quality to enable the downloads.
The local NGO, C3, is working with Cherry Mobile to address this, and until it can be resolved data is collected manually from the phones by downloading onto a computer. Please see C3's fascinating video about dugongs attached. This sort of teething problem is to be expected but the key principal of having local fishermen be the eyes of the conservationists is proving to be both scientifically successful and gratifying for its users.
Meanwhile we are excited to announce that the work undertaken on this app is turning out to be useful for other conservation purposes. The app is being integrated into an anti-poaching reporting app which will soon be tested and deployed in a national park in Africa. More about that later. Watch out for our next report!
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