MARAP

MARAP is a mobile app co-created by fishers, tour guides, and coastal communities with the intent to gather ecological data from diverse data streams whilst promoting marine stewardship through education, awareness and community engagement. The app allows users to collect and store sightings and catch data of marine species in a ‘diary’, which provides detailed insights into their data, explaining the actionable outcomes of trends among each species. The app aims to foster compliance through awareness, by alerting users when they enter a marine protected area and providing unambiguous rules and regulations of the relevant zone, whilst users can aid enforcement by anonymously reporting suspected illegal activity. The app also focuses on community building to encourage long term engagement, with dedicated community and events pages. The app also supports MarAlliances field data collection, allowing team members to input project specific data in the ‘project’ page, with opportunity for expansion to other research organisations.