With increased marine shipping, coastal development and threats from climate change, the need to monitor coastal and offshore waters for changes is more important than ever before. 

This program empowers community members to easily contribute high-quality, continuous data on water properties to help better understand and inform policy on fish habitat and the changes that may be impacting the ocean environment over time. 

Coastline monitoring has historically relied on research vessels with expert staff, both of which are commonly in short supply and are expensive. These factors can result in water property measurements taken only a few times a year in spot locations. 

In response to this challenge, Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) developed the Community Fishers mobile app that provides a practical, user-friendly tool for collecting data and accessing it via the Oceans 3.0 Data Portal. 

Consisting of a mobile application that connects wirelessly to a conductivity temperature depth (CTD) instrument and additional sensors, Community Fishers enables an organization or community to engage all vessels of opportunity (such as fishing and recreational boats), allowing for more flexible, frequent and locally relevant sampling of water properties without the cost or requirement of utilizing specialized research vessels and scientific staff.