MSI PI Paul Venturelli (Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology; College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences) has created an app that allows anglers to record their catches. This information will help fisheries managers maintain Minnesota’s lakes. For years, this has been done with in-person creel surveys, but these surveys are time-consuming and expensive to run.
The app, iFish Forever, is free and anonymous. It is an add-on to an iFish app released earlier. Anglers can hit a “Caught One!” button on their iPhone or Android, and input species, length, and whether they kept the fish or threw it back. The phones capture time and date. The app also allows anglers to find out what kinds of fish are in different lakes.
An article about iFish Forever appears on the U’s Discover blog. It has also received media attention: MPR, KARE11, Minnesota Daily.
Professor Venturelli uses the MSI supercomputers to run simulations that show fish populations and community dynamics on an evolving coastal delta system.