improving ghost fishing gear retrieval

Around the world, ghost (lost) fishing nets is a massive issue, trapping animals until harm or death, as well as causing costly damage to passing ships.

There are minimal solutions on the market to help reduce lost fishing gear, with the greatest attempt being retrieval divers going about manually finding the lost gear. This blind method is timely, costly, and very unsafe.

As a team, we developed small tags that would be installed in batches on the net from the factory. These would notify the owner of a lost net, trigger the ships GPS system for last known location, and offer real time tracking of the nets to aid retrieval.

ultimately, this solution offers a reduction in animal harm and ship damage, through faster ghost gear retrieval time.

Special thanks to the rest of the team: Dayna Booth, Amanda Glickman, Zhenxuan Xie, and You Wu.

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