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Interview with Gema Canal Observers on board are specialists that work on board of commercial fishing vessels or at fish processing plants. They can be employed by a fisheries observer program, such as MRAG Americas INC (working on North Pacific groundfish), either by a third-party contractor or by a governmental agency. An observer on-board is mandatory for some cases, for example for all the member countries of ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas). Fisheries, mammal and bird research depend on the information provided by observers, which is considered the only independent source of data available from fishing operations. Gema Canal is a marine biologist that works as an observer on-board on fishing boats since 2005. Currently, she works an observer on-board for two research groups: the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and the ICCAT. Which are the tasks of an observer on-board? The observer on-board is a

Whether we are talking about people living in a megalopolis like São Paulo or those living in the middle of the Amazon, we know they spend increasing time on smartphones and  tablets . Arguably, younger generations do not even seem able to function without their smartphones. While most of the time spent on these gadgets can be wasted, not all is lost. We pay bills, check the weather, call taxis, learn a new language, control our diet, monitor exercise, and now we can also monitor natural resources!  Two apps launched recently in Brazil intend to help monitor fishing resources: “Fisheries Monitoring Software” (in Portuguese, Software de Monitoramento Pesqueiro, by iSUS) and “Fish+” (Portuguese, Pesca+, by WWF Brazil). The two apps target different audiences. The Fisheries Monitoring Software intends to be used by collectors of fishing data, such as governmental institutions in charge of fishing statistics. Fish+ was developed to be used by fishers, especially those living in remote area