Over the decades, there are more than 100 fish species vanished around northern Taiwan. Although Taiwan is surrounded by the sea, based on Ocean Health Index, the score of Taiwan is lower than global average. Because people take fishery resources for granted and are lack of understanding about the severe status quo of marine ecosystem.

The worst of all, Taiwanese keep consuming endangered fish because people cannot see which fish are endangered.

We developed the mobile web app “Fish Checker” with machine learning process for consumers in Taiwan. By just following 3 simple steps: Scan, Show & Share, users can easily check the fish are endangered or not.

Step 1: Scan

After scanning the fish, the app automatically matches the fish figure and the fish data in the database.

Step 2: Show

The result shows whether the fish are Endangered, Nearly Endangered or OK to eat. According to the result, users can make more ocean friendly purchase decision.

Step 3: Share

Users can share the result through social media to spread the fact of the endangered fish.\

Phase 1:

The Fish Checker mainly targeted fishery-related schools, environmental NGOs and subscribers of Taiwan Edible Magazine. Due to their testing and efforts, we have built up the database of endangered fishes with this app.

Phase 2:

Recently, we keep on optimizing the accuracy of AI image recognition and start to promote Fish Checker to consumers in Taiwan by collaborating with markets, restaurants and schools to educate the importance of this helpful tool.

The Fish Checker web app was powered by Google Cloud Vision API. Besides, many volunteers and ocean lovers assisted us to collect thousands of images and establish the database of endangered fishes from 2018.

In the beginning of 2019, Taiwan Edible Magazine launched a landing page of Fish Checker with its QR code for all Taiwanese to try this web app and accelerate its machine learning process to improve the accuracy of this app’s scanning technology.

Through the collaboration with Taiwan Ocean University, the app plans to be used by professors and students for the lectures also researches.

Currently, this app mainly deals with fishes living near Taiwan. But by modifying this and expanding the area, we believe we can change people’s behavior and, save the whole ecosystem of the ocean all over the world.