Blue Ventures works to rebuild tropical fisheries with coastal communities by developing transformative approaches for catalysing and sustaining locally led marine conservation. They help coastal communities implement smartphone-based monitoring systems to electronically capture catch data that had previously been recorded using paper notebooks. They have pilot projects in the Madagascan shark fishery.

They have also created tools – such as the Open Data Kit (ODK) – to help users build bespoke mobile data collection forms with limited prior technical knowledge. They’ve adapted their mobile system to numerous contexts, from the shores of east Africa to the islands of the coral triangle, and from use by fishing communities to monitor marine turtle nesting sites and fishery landings, to gathering feedback from ecotourists and even registering attendance at community health clinics. Each new iteration tests the flexibility of the system and provides new tools and learning, experiences to support partners seeking to adopt this open source technology, from countries and contexts as far afield as Mozambique, Comoros and Indonesia.