Development and deployment of a pilot multilingual citizen- science mobile application for georeferenced marine catch observations in India

Marine fishery advisory services represent a translation of satellite-derived scientific information into actionable guidance for marine fishing communities in India, enabling fishers to locate potential fishing grounds more efficiently and reduce search time. To transform the advisories into forecasts and develop species-specific predictions of fishery grounds, high-quality and high-frequency georeferenced fish catch data over a large spatial scale is essential. To enhance data collection, INCOIS has developed a citizen science approach using a user-friendly Android App named ‘Fisheries Information Source Hub (FISH)’, enabling widespread citizen participation, mainly by the fishers using their mobile phones. This initiative simplifies data gathering and supports the long-term goal of reliable, species-specific fishery predictions. The data collected through the FISH App is transmitted to a central processing facility at INCOIS and undergoes necessary quality control before further analysis. This study introduces the FISH App, which has demonstrated encouraging outcomes during its initial deployment, with nearly a thousand installations and a 20-fold increase in data submissions between the first two years of implementation. The initiative holds significant potential for future development into a citizen science-based information hub, facilitating broader stakeholder participation and data-driven fisheries management.