OurFish: An Application to Restore a Healthy Ocean Ecosystem

The Client

Rare is a leading behavior change non-profit organization. Rare has inspired people to embrace actions that benefit both people and the environment for more than 45 years and in 60 different nations. The organization advocates against global issues like gender inequality, food scarcity, climate change, and disrupted biodiversity. To scale up solutions, Rare collaborates with regional organizations and communities, highlights regional solutions, and links to influential figures from the public, nonprofit, academia, and other sectors.

The Product

In 2020, Melon dedicated one back-end developer, one mobile developer, and one project manager to develop an application called OurFish. OurFish’s goal is to contribute to better management of small-scale fisheries by supporting vendors and fishermen from underdeveloped countries. While keeping track of the quantity and the species of fish they purchase from each fisher, the application assists vendors in digitizing and simplifying their fish purchasing process. Our Fish targets vendors because many fishermen in underdeveloped countries do not own electronic devices and cannot download the app. Vendors assist fishermen by providing them with a summary and statistics of what they have sold, to whom, and whether they owe or are owed anything by anyone.

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By gathering important data, the platform distributes fishing quotas among fishers, with preference to those that can ensure better environmental, social, and economic outcomes. The software ensures transparency and helps in the sustainable management of stocks by creating a better understanding of how much fish is being taken out of the sea. Additional features are still being developed by Melon's team. OurFish will soon have barter options and a financial summary to track sales.

Because of the users targeted by Rare, Melon’s team developed an Android application in Java that supports older versions of the operating system. AWS Lambda-hosted back-end technology built on the Django framework allows the client to modify the app. 

The Challenges

The major problem for Melon's team was that there was no automatic QA testing because of a client-side financial restriction. Even though the project manager on Melon's end conducted some manual testing, bugs went undetected. There were a few problems along the way, but Melon's carefully chosen software development team overcame them and learned that they should always go to the bottom of the problem, anticipate what the issue might be on the client’s side, and be proactive in offering help. 

Our Partnership

The communication with the client was open and transparent. Weekly meetings were organized to go over both parties’ progress. If problems arised, Melon's team did everything they could to help the organization and find quick solutions. 

Results

Together with Rare, Melon created an application that provides retailers and fishermen with digitalized data about their sales. Additionally, OurFish gives them easy access to statistics about the varieties and quantities of fish fishers sell. Vendors can compare the data to discover what goods they have purchased over the course of several days, months, and years. In the future, OurFish will collect financial data and produce reports about the income of the fishermen. The fishers will be able to verify their revenue before financial institutions, enabling them to apply for loans.

“It is fascinating for me to see how such a small app, targeting a very specific group has such a big impact on the lives of both fishers and vendors as well as the future of our planet,” says Igor Dobrosavljevic, Project Manager of the OurFish project.