Iacurci, Jenna. “FWC Unveils Tracking App for Invasive Florida Lionfish.” natureworldnews.com. Nature World News, 29 May 2014. Web. 8 June 2014. http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7297/20140529/fwc-unveils-tracking-app-for-invasive-florida-lionfish.htm
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) developed a lionfish tracking app for smartphones in order to collect data about lionfish population size and whereabouts. The Florida lionfish is an invasive species that has no natural predators in Florida’s oceans, so tracking them is important in order to keep their population size at a manageable amount. Currently, the lionfish eat other native fish and damage coral reefs. I think using free, accessible technology like a smartphone app is a good way to track lionfish and illustrates how technology can be used to help collect data that wouldn’t otherwise be easily accessible. Using an app allows a large amount of people to monitor and help quantify information about a specific species, but the effort is minimal (people only have to take a picture of the lionfish when they see one and the app does the rest of the work). Without technology, information about the lionfish would be harder to collect by means of marine research and tagging single fish with tracking devices. The use of a smartphone app also provides easily accessed information about the lionfish species to people who are documenting their locations. I think this is a good example of using technology as a channel to better understand and study the environment.
