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Ropeless Fisher™ App

Virtual Gear Marking and Smarter Practices for Ropeless Fishing

A major concern about implementing ropeless fishing is the possibility of gear overlay and identifying traps without the presence of surface buoys. The solution is the simple, free Ropeless Fisher™ app which runs on your GPS integrated smartphone or tablet. The app logs trap deployment locations then displays those location to other fishermen when operating within a "visibility radius" of your traps that you define. Regulators may see submerged gear from any location at any time. Protect your gear from overlay while maintaining your proprietary locations by setting a visibility radius to fit your needs.

Download the latest version of Ropeless Fisher

For android devices (all versions). Other platforms may be supported in the future.

App notes and instructions here!

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Avoid Gear Overlay

Map and list view mitigates any unintentional gear overlay among all fishermen.

Regulators See All

Only federal and state regulators can see all traps, at all times, from any location.

Free for Everyone

Available for android smartphones, and tablets. iOS version under consideration..

Screen Shots from the Android Version of Rope-less Fisher

Can everyone see my trap locations?

Yes and no. First, when deploying a trap the fisher has the choice to determine at what distance it may be seen. For example, Fisher A deploys trap 357 at location X. Fisher A then sets the visibility range to 1 mile. Fisher B then comes along to set his trap at location X. Fisher B will ONLY see Fisher A's trap if he is at or within 1 mile of the trap. Anytime Fisher B is outside of 1 mile from trap 357 then he will not see Fisher A's trap.

Which privileges do regulators get?

Regulators must go through a verification process in order to obtain a regulator profile. Regulator profiles have special privileges that fishermen profiles do not. Regulator profiles may see all traps deployed from any fisher from their offices. Aside from the Rope-less fisher app, regulators also have the ability to deploy rope-less traps for inspection purposes.

Is acoustic gear marking available for the ARC-1XD?

Acoustic gear marking is the idea of a "public code" through which a submerged buoy can be prompted to reply. We believe this method is not effective as a means of gear de-conflicting because the horizontal range of acoustic signaling depends on many factors and is limited especially in shallow waters. Thus when running trawls, the presence of another fishers' trawl may not necessarily be apparent from your trawl starting point. However, we recommend acoustic marking as a means of fishery enforcement, such as to detect unreported submerged gear. This capability can be added to the ARC-1XD through a software upgrade. We have not yet implemented this function pending advice on this matter from regulators. Please contact us if this a requirement for your fishery.

Will Ropeless Fisher work on my device?

Currently Desert Star Systems only offers the Ropeless Fisher App for Android Devices. After this beta phase, we plan to expand compatibility to iPhones, tablets, laptops, computers, and eventually VMS systems.

Avoid Gear Overlay - The Rope-less fisher app was born through the idea of making sure traps with no surface buoys can still be seen by other fishermen and regulators alike. Through the app, each deployed trap has a marked GPS location which is stored and updated to a cloud database when in cell-phone/wifi reach. The app then lists each trap deployment through a list or map view which indicates if a trap is near and whether or not a fisherman should lay traps in that location given the presence of nearby traps.

Regulators See All

As previously mentioned, regulators (with the Rope-less Fisher app) will have the ability to see all trap locations from any distance. This means significantly reduced costs for regulators by mitigating the coast of boating expenses. This also means more time available to concentrate resources since regulators no longer have to guess or go to trap locations as often.

Free for Everyone

The Rope-less Fisher app is and will always be free of charge for anyone who wishes to download it. The app is also available on any android platform which includes a GPS receiver, an iOS version is in development.