Washington, DC - The Secretary’s Office of Global Partnerships at the U.S. Department of State announced today the two grand prize winning teams of the 2015 Fishackathon, a public-private partnership which uses technology to create innovative solutions for the sustainable management of fisheries and the protection of our ocean.
The “/tone/GSMA mFish” grand prize for the best mobile app, selected by a panel of expert judges, is awarded to Team Fish-o-Tron from London, who created an app to measure and track fish. The team will win a paid trip for two team members to showcase their app at the 2016 GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
The “Our Ocean” grand prize, selected as the “people’s choice award” through public voting on the ChallengePost site, is awarded to Team KnowFish from Atlanta, who created an app that displays fishing species, laws, and regulations based on detected location. The team will win a paid trip for two team members to attend and demo their solution at the 2015 Our Ocean conference in Chile this October.
The two grand prize winning teams were chosen out of a pool of 12 finalist teams representing each city where Fishackathon was held this June 5–7. Many of the teams are already working with the organizations who suggested the problem statements they chose to address in their solutions, with the potential to scale the platforms and implement them around the world.