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What’s the Big Problem with Fishing?
From discarded plastic, ocean noise to rising sea levels – there are serious problems caused by humans impacting the health of our oceans.
Overfishing is one of the very worst, critically damaging vital ecosystems, whilst threatening the livelihoods of low-income, coastal communities everywhere.
To put it into context, we have already removed at least two-thirds of the large fish in the ocean. One in three fish populations have collapsed since 1950. Industrial trawling of the ocean floor obliterates an area about the size of the whole Amazon rainforest every year, releasing giga tonnes of deadly smothering sediment and as much CO2 as the entire aviation industry. The hardest hit are inevitably local fishing communities who are left struggling to feed their families, sowing unrest and further environmental damage when they have to turn in-land for food.
Why is this allowed? Because it happens in the vast oceans and it’s out of sight, making it hard for most people to understand and even harder for authorities to see who’s doing what.
So can technology help?
SRT and the Philippine Vessel Monitoring System
SRT are global leaders in the technologies that monitor vessels at sea, built around their AIS (Automatic Identification System) technology which vessels use to identify and avoid each other. AIS is also used by ports, environment agencies and coast guards, now a critical way for rescue services to find vessels in an emergency, meaning SRT products are saving lives almost every day.
The Philippines is a nation of over 7000 islands, becoming increasingly concerned about effects of over-fishing on the wellbeing and social stability of their extensive coastal communities. So when the Philippine Government decided to create a national Vessel Monitoring System to help manage fishing in their waters, they selected SRT to provide the technology.
A key component required for the Philippines’ system is the VMS-100 on-board transceiver, planned to be fitted to 5000 local vessels, enabling the reporting of any vessel’s position, activity and fish catches to the monitoring system. Which is what SRT turned to Realise for help with…
The Design Challenge
With SRT undertaking their own in-house electronic design and development, SRT asked Realise to integrate alongside their existing team to design a robust easy to-use enclosure to suit. After analysing the situation and requirements, the basic brief we set for ourselves was:
Technical Functionality
- Robustness and reliability – ruggedised impact-proof enclosure with enhanced water IP sealing to suit the challenging conditions onboard busy commercial boats in all weather
- Achieve Compliance – meet the security and safety regulations in multiple regions with high-performance anti-tamper features
- Lower cost of manufacture – streamline the assembly process, reduce part count and improve quality limiting rejects on the production line
User experience
- Aesthetics – needed to support the SRT brand, appearing technical and trustworthy, whilst also suiting owners who haven’t chosen to have this onboard, therefore being approachable and not invasive
- Ease of installation – to be easily and quickly fitted to 100’s of different vessels by semi-skilled installer
- Usability – intuitive & easy to use in difficult conditions, ideally without a manual, reducing mistakes and confusion
We immediately realised that there was an interesting tension needing to appear technical versus friendly and approachable to a wide range of people from commercial ship owners to local fishermen running their own small traditional wooden fishing boat. This would be a tricky balance to achieve!
