Invasive species solution wins Fishackathon 2016

The team will receive a $10,000 cash prize sponsored by Virgin Group for their solution.

Fishackathon is a global initiative, organised by the US Department of State Office of Global Partnerships, designed to raise awareness and help develop innovative solutions to address overfishing and marine sustainability issues that are increasingly facing the world.

Team Akubic addressed a problem statement submitted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada: aquatic invasive species, specifically Asian Carp, presenting a major ecological and economic threat to the Great Lakes.

Their solution, Great Lakes Savior, seeks to control populations of this invasive species by using online real-time temperature and flow data to predict spawning times of Asian carp in the Great Lakes region.

Asian carps, a species once foreign to the Great Lakes, have endangered the aboriginal creatures and fishery economy in the region. Elsewhere on this planet, the problem of alien species has also been threatening the sustainability of the world underwater.

One good way of containing this situation and perhaps reversing this downward spiral is to predict the spawning and hatching period of the alien species so as to wipe it out completely. This method will be proven extremely effective in the case of the Asian carps in the Great Lakes region.

The Akubic team used IOT technology to design a ‘low-cost water sensor’ and a comprehensive solution complete with hardware, software, and cloud algorithm technology. The versatile sensor provides timely data on water variation. It comes with a user-friendly graphic interface while performing various functions with little maintenance requirements. Its low manufacturing cost makes it the optimal choice for governmental agencies on limited budget and the sensor helps the authorities concerned identify high-risk zones that require the most immediate attention.