The success of a bottom culture shellfish farm depends on many factors, including water quality, temperature, and food supply. But monitoring the health of shellfish and predicting yield can be challenging due to the lack of data. In many cases, farmers rely on manual record-keeping and subjective estimations. Moreover, unexpected events, such as sudden die-off, can severely impact yields and make planning difficult. Here we present FindMyOyster, a software tool to help manage and monitor a bottom culture shellfish farm. The tool is composed of a web based dashboard and a mobile app for collecting data in the field. This allows farmers to easily track their operations and metrics directly from their mobile devices. The mobile app includes features for mapping and navigation, making it easy for farmers to locate specific areas on the farm and record data accurately. The collected data is automatically synced with the dashboard, giving farmers access to real-time information to make informed decisions.
The tool is based on FarmOS, an open-source application for farm management, planning, and record keeping. FarmOS provides many capabilities that are generally useful for any type of farm operation. We leverage many of those features and extend them to help specifically with bottom culture shellfish farming. We extend the functionality of FarmOS with a custom module to introduce concepts needed for shellfish farming, such as water lease and oyster species. With the mobile app we add a custom workflow that would not work with the web application alone. The app makes it easy to capture precise location data e.g., mark observations with a GPS coordinate or record the path of the boat when seeding and harvesting. The app can help navigate the boat within a farm plot to cover the bottom evenly on repeat visits.
FindMyOyster aims to help shellfish farmers by giving them additional data and insights about their farm, with minimal disruption to the workflow they are already used to. Our hope is that the tool can help farmers make informed decisions and that over time it can be used to make accurate predictions.