Abalobi provides a real-time marketplace for fishers to sell their catch, while also monitoring fish populations, and the tech could go global
The 59-year-old Wilfred Poggenpoel is a fisher from Lambert’s Bay, a picturesque town 170 miles north of Cape Town that’s popular with surfers and home to 17,000 breeding pairs of Cape gannets. Five years ago, he made the decision to join a virtual marketplace called Abalobi, which enables fishers such as him to sell their catch directly to restaurants, retailers and consumers using a custom-built app.
“I get a better price and I can sell more species now,” he says. “I’ve bought a 60-horsepower motor that I’d never have been able to afford before. I’ve bought a second boat.” He joined, he says, because he didn’t want to spend all day walking around town in the sun trying to sell fish. “My quality of life has improved. I’ve even been able to help some old people in the community.”
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/07/2024 - 01:00
05/06/2024 - 23:00
Fish welfare campaigners say Defra decision facilitates greenwashing and will mislead consumers
Animal welfare campaigners are challenging the decision to allow producers of Scottish salmon to drop the word “farmed” from labelling.
An application by the industry body claimed changing the protected name wording on the front of packaging from “Scottish farmed salmon” to “Scottish salmon” made sense because wild salmon was no longer sold in supermarkets, which consumers were aware of.
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05/06/2024 - 12:17
More than 200 expected to join protest calling for climate action and to cut ties with Israeli institutions
Israel-Gaza war – live updates
More than 100 students have occupied Ghent University in the first European protest to fuse demands about Gaza and the climate crisis.
Ghent’s centrepiece UFO building was peacefully taken over by students calling for concrete action to meet the university’s 2030 climate plans, and asking the university to cut ties with institutions connected to the Israeli military.
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05/06/2024 - 12:16
To preserve the important intertidal areas and salt marshes off our coasts for the future, we need more turbid water. That is one of the striking conclusions from a new study.
05/06/2024 - 10:32
Your daily caffeine habit is not good for the planet. Thankfully, researchers are finding alternatives to ground coffee beans
Name: Synthetic coffee.
Age: Three.
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05/06/2024 - 07:01
Exclusive: Mukhtar Babayev says clear accounting crucial to build trust as developing world seeks trillions in support
Poor countries must demonstrate clearer accounting and transparency to back up their calls for trillions of dollars of climate finance, the president of global climate negotiations has said.
Mukhtar Babayev, the ecology minister of Azerbaijan, who will lead the Cop29 UN climate summit in November, urged governments in developing countries to draw up reports showing their progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and their spending on the climate crisis.
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05/06/2024 - 02:32
This part of South America is no stranger to major rainfall, but last week’s storms were particularly devastating
Torrential rainstorms in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul have caused the worst flooding the country has seen in 80 years, many deaths and the displacement of thousands of families. Central parts of the state were hit the hardest after the storms began last Monday, with unofficial weather stations in the area recording 50-100cm (20-40in) of rain over the past week.
Widespread floods and landslides have caused major damage to homes and infrastructure, most alarmingly triggering the partial collapse of a small hydroelectric dam on Thursday, which sent a 2-metre-high wave through the surrounding area. At least 57 deaths have been reported and 24,000 people have been displaced, alongside an estimated 500,000 being without power and clean water.
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05/05/2024 - 23:00
Union cites extreme wet weather and post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies as main reasons for slump
Farmers’ confidence has hit its lowest level in at least 14 years, a long-running survey by the biggest farming union in Britain has found, with extreme weather and the post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies blamed for the drop.
The National Farmers’ Union warned there had been a “collapse of confidence” and that the outlook was at its lowest since the annual poll of its members in England and Wales began in 2010.
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05/05/2024 - 11:11
Officials in Rio Grande do Sul state say more than 80,000 have been displaced by record water levels
Seventy-five people are now known to have died in the flooding in Brazil’s southern Rio Grande do Sul state, while more than 100 people remain missing, local authorities said on Sunday.
The state’s civil defence authority said 101 people were unaccounted for and more than 80,000 had been displaced after record-breaking floods swept across the state, which borders Uruguay and Argentina.
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05/05/2024 - 10:00
Audio collected with underwater microphones suggests numbers at least stable after centuries of industrial whaling left only a few hundred alive
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Centuries of industrial whaling left only a few hundred Antarctic blue whales alive, making it almost impossible to find them in the wild.
New research suggests the population may be recovering. Australian scientists and international colleagues spent two decades listening for their distinctive songs and calls, and have found the whales – the largest animals ever to have lived – swimming across the Southern Ocean with growing regularity.
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