Seadog Fishing Solutions, Inc. is a San Francisco-based company that provides mobile and web applications for commercial and recreational fisheries around the world. Our focus is on utility, affordability, and security.
Mobile
The Seadog mobile application is a digital assistant for commercial and recreational fishing. With this app, users can securely log their fishing activity, in just one place, and get private insights into their data, to improve operations. Seadog lets fishermen consult maritime forecasts before and during a trip, record high-frequency GPS coordinates of trips, view maps online and offline, tag fishing gear drop spots, log catches and fish sales, consult past trips, and run AI-powered analyses on historical data.
The mobile app comes with three options for data privacy: in “full privacy” mode, users are the sole proprietors of their data, which they can use as a personal logbook. In “fleet manager” mode, users can share operational data with the vessel owner or some other person of trust. Finally, in “fisheries manager” mode, users share privacy-preserving summaries of their data with fisheries managers, fishing cooperatives, or other institutions.
Web
With the Seadog web application, individual users can consult their data with greater convenience, on a tablet or desktop computer. Fleet and fisheries managers, on the other hand, can easily assess the spatial and temporal distribution of fisheries catches and effort, for all the vessels that carry devices with the Seadog mobile app. Managers can send instant messages to online participating vessels, and notify others as they come back to shore. This type of near real time interaction can greatly assist in bycatch reduction and operations management. With sufficient participants, fisheries managers can run stock status diagnostics, ranging from standard tools to high-end deep learning models.
Progress
The Seadog software suite can be used by almost anyone who wishes to record their recreational or commercial fishing activity. All that is needed is an Android smartphone (Oreo or newer OS) with the Seadog mobile app installed, plus (if desired) an internet connection to access the web app. We designed such a thrifty setup so that we could support unmanaged fisheries across the world, and help more people access valuable models and data, including their own.
Over the last three years, we have been partnering with US, Portuguese, and Filipino fishermen, to develop our services and test them on a multitude of devices, environments, and use cases.
In early 2023, we began assisting the Wildlife Conservation Society, under the Blue Future project, to run a pilot study in Mozambique. Specifically, we are providing seven fishing communities with our software, so that fishermen can consult hyperlocal maritime forecasts and log fishing effort and catches of target species as well as bycatch. This project will enhance the protection of ecosystems that provide essential services to coastal communities – from marine protected areas to coastal resilience against cyclones –, and will pave the way to sustainable fisheries co-management models.
Ricardo Lemos is president of Seadog Fishing Solutions, in San Francisco, CA. He is a quantitative researcher with experience in academia and the software industry, skilled in statistical modeling of natural resources (agriculture and fisheries), weather, ocean, and air quality variability. Ricardo welcomes any comments or questions via email.
