When it comes to fishing apps, this is one you don’t want to get away.
Identafish comes from the mind of sophomore Geoffrey Ruiz, who has been wielding a fishing rod since he was a toddler. He can tell you anything you want to know about the fishing holes around his native Lecanto, Fla. Take him fishing farther away from home, though, and Geoffrey will find himself in a predicament shared by many anglers: “What did I just catch, and can I keep it?”
That problem was top of mind when Geoffrey was inspired by a class project to develop an app that allows anglers to immediately identify what they’ve caught and, more importantly, its related state regulations.
“You don’t want to take the chance on a hefty fee, but neither do you want throw back a perfectly legal fish,” Geoffrey explains.
Geoffrey’s professor introduced him and his classmates to a third-party app developer who helped them get started on Identafish. As they increase their coding knowledge, Geoffrey expects Identafish to include real-time geographic information and photo recognition. That will make it possible for him to travel anywhere in the United States and, ultimately, the world and know what’s on the end of his line.
The chance to apply classroom knowledge to a real-world problem — in his first year no less — is precisely why Geoffrey chose Florida Poly.
“This is the kind of thing I can already put on my resume. I actually have something to show from my classes,” Geoffrey says.