The Victorian Fisheries Authority (VFA) handles Victoria’s fisheries resources and is constantly working with stakeholders to deliver outcomes pertaining to sustainable fishing, aquaculture, clear resource access, and increased economic, social and cultural value.
Building on their trusted community and stakeholders, VFA saw an opportunity to crowdsource data from ‘fishers’ (anglers) to help inform them of fish stocks and waterway health across Victoria’s waterways. By capturing catch data, scientific information would be yielded to help better understand the impact of environment events against catch rates for different fish breeds. The project would be a world-first.
VFA sought to create an Angler Diary that would be devised from mass crowdsourced data from an estimated 40-60k Victorian fishers. Contributors to this diary would be represented by a keen community of anglers who enthusiastically kept track of their own catches.
Expanding on this idea, Newpath Web established a technology stack and the app concept leveraging our innovation sprint program. Interactive prototypes and a beautiful interface design would be tested with the community prior to development. A phased product release process would allow us to continuously release new features to the user base. The interactions and experiences offered by each featured would be informed by user data and feedback.
There are over 300 angling clubs in Victoria and more than 800,000 individual recreational fishers; every one of them has a fishing story to tell. In essence, this represents a massive amount of untapped information that can be used to maintain healthy fisheries and create even better recreational fishing opportunities. GoFishVic is the answer to capturing that data, leading to a better fishing future for anglers across Victoria.This app is the digital reinvention of how recreational fishers can record their fishing successes and improve their future results, while at the same time, helping the Victorian Fisheries Authority gather robust and invaluable data to track the performance of our most important fisheries and ensure their health and stock for us today and future generations.
Users can improve their fishing success by recording their experiences, reviewing their catch history, and analyze visual graphs of their fishing results by the trip, by species, by location, and more. You decide how to filter the information, so you can see at a glance where the best fisheries are, what gear and bait works best, where record numbers of species are, and what seasonal conditions are best to catch them. GoFishVic is a free and easy-to-use app for anglers to record their fishing trips and help ensure the health and management of our fisheries.