FishLine Mobile App Hooks Consumers up to Fresh, Local Seafood

Half Moon Bay & Morro Bay, California - May 6, 2013.  Phondini Partners announces the release of the FishLine™ 2 mobile app, which delivers a collection of firsts to the seafood consumer.  FishLine 2 uses crowdsourcing and Cloud technology to bring together buyers and sellers of fresh, local, sustainable seafood.  It is the first app to provide a real-time list of seafood available from local fishing boats, fish markets and restaurants.

FishLine makes it easy for the consumer to know exactly what they are being served by seeing what catch the local fishing boats are landing and which markets & restaurants they are selling it to. It also provides a wealth of information about the fishing community including bios, stories, poetry and recipes from the fishermen, descriptions of the fisheries and seafood in the areas, as well as an event calendar, weather, surf report & tide tables for waterfront activities.

“FishLine 2 is the result of a year of work building upon the FishLine feature in our iCoastside Half Moon Bay community app,” said Joe Falcone, Founder, Managing Partner & CTO of Phondini Partners.  “When FishLine became the most popular feature in iCoastside, we knew that we had to invest in the development of a separate app to fulfill consumer expectations.”

The original FishLine concept came about in response to the recovery of the Pacific salmon season in 2012.  Fishing boats arrived in Pillar Point Harbor, Half Moon Bay with loads of salmon, but there were no customers.  FishLine allowed fishermen to tell consumers directly, and immediately, when they had fish to sell off their boats at the harbor.

“When we were invited last October to present FishLine at the 2013 National Working Waterfronts & Waterways Symposium, we realized that we had something special,” said Dan Blick, FishLine Product Manager. “The next step was to develop the FishLine into an app.”

To do this, Phondini turned its sights south to Morro Bay and recruited environmental scientist Julie Thomas to engage the vibrant fishing industry in San Luis Obispo county.

“So we applied for a grant from the Central California Joint Cable/Fisheries Liaison Committee to build the FishLine app,” said Ms. Thomas, now Local Project Manager for Phondini. “When we were awarded the grant in February, it not only funded FishLine’s expansion to cover six Central California ports from Port San Luis to Pillar Point, but also enabled inclusion of content from the committee-funded Faces of California Fishing project among other features.”

“I’m excited FishLine is expanding to serve the Central Coast with it’s app that will bring local fishermen together with eager consumers of fresh seafood,” said Jeff Eckles, Chairman of the Morro Bay Harbor Advisory Board.  “It’s innovative approach will serve both the fishing industry as well as help consumers find fresh, local and properly-labeled seafood.”

Phondini is now in the process of expanding FishLine further into California, and into Oregon & Washington as well as into the Gulf Coast and Atlantic fisheries.

FishLine is free and available now on the Apple iTunes App Store for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch, the Google Play Store for Android, and the Amazon AppStore for Android.  There is no charge to either sellers or buyers for using the app.  Download FishLine at www.fishline.us.