May 6, 2016 โ Behold a few of the marvelous things the internet has done for us: filed our taxes, found us dates, recommended that we watch the film Repo Man. Is there anything the internet canโt do? No, thereโs not, and for proof I offer the fact that I am sitting in a room, watching people try to use the internet to save fish. Fish are in serious trouble, thanks to both overfishing and climate change. Could the tech world, with its legendary affinity for sushi, come to the rescue?
The U.S. State Department thinks so, and has a few ideas about how best to go about keeping the worldโs remaining supply of fish alive and reproducing. For the last three years, itโs held a weekend-long coding competition (aka โhackathonโ) as a way of getting those ideas implemented. Itโs called the Fishackathon.
In cities around the world, coders work around the clock for a weekend to come up with software (and sometimes hardware) to tackle the problem of overfishing. At the end of it, a panel of judges in each city picks a winning team, and then the State Department unveils the winner of all winners on June 8 (World Oceans Day). That victorious team gets a $10,000 prize and a chance to develop their project with a U.S. government contractor.