The estimated global death toll of fishers around the world for the last few decades has hovered around 24,000 to 32,000 annually, according to a FISH Safety Foundation report from 2023.
However, that same report stated that those estimates are generally considered to be overly conservative. The report, instead, placed the projected death toll at more than 100,000 fishers per year.
In an attempt to improve fisher safety and drive down the jarring death toll statistics, Benjamin So, a New Zealand-based seafood trader, developed Uptime, a range of low-cost wearable tracking devices connected to satellite technology that won a Responsible Seafood Innovation Award at the 2023 Responsible Seafood Summit. The technology has also been nominated for the 2026 Earthshot Prize in the “Revive Our Oceans” category.
“It was the extraordinary death toll that set us down this path,” So said.
Uptime functions as a black box for fishermen or gear that goes overboard. Located within a fisherman’s lifejacket, Uptime sends out an alert when it detects a fisherman has left the vessel on which they’re working. The system then uses satellite connectivity to send out data on the vessel’s location and where the overboard fisherman might be.
The concept for Uptime – developed by Zeal Industries, of which So is a co-founder – came about through work to verify sustainability claims with his export firm 178 Degrees, which supplies seafood to buyers in Hong Kong, according to So.
“The task relies heavily on traceability, which in turn is founded upon location data. After some exploratory research, we concluded that the basic technology existed to make affordable tracking feasible,” he said. “During the development process, we decided to shift focus to the potential of the technology to improve fisher safety, especially in the under-resourced area of artisanal fishing.”
So told SeafoodSource he then leveraged his existing network in the global fisheries industry to establish partnerships with the International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF), WorldFish, and the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA) to trial the Uptime technology with small-scale fishers.
Uptime’s first at-sea trial was conducted in 2025 in Tanzania, where So also conducted interviews with local small-scale tuna fishers to understand how they could most effectively benefit from technology like Uptime. More trials are now planned in several other African countries, as well as Japan and Portugal.
Meanwhile, So said he is looking for financial backers in order to initiate a larger rollout of Uptime devices.
“It’s probable that we will need funding from governments or NGOs to get things off the ground in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. Once volumes can be ramped up, these subsidies will be needed less and less,” So said.
More specifically, So said he’s planning to approach the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank, and Bloomberg Philanthropies to possibly assist in facilitating funding.
A site to mass produce the devices hasn’t yet been decided but, according to So, Zeal Industries is “contemplating a distributed model in which the fisher communities themselves manufacture the devices.”
“[This would] ease the logistical challenge for us and, at the same time, create economic value at the edges where it is most needed,” he said.
So said interest in seafood traceability from corporate and retail members of the supply chain will be key in driving demand for vessel-tracking solutions like Uptime.
“While our motivation comes from a drive to improve fisher safety, we also have to recognize that [seafood] customers – as opposed to the users, the fishers themselves – have different concerns. Often, this centers on economic value. Traceability is one way in which this can be created through the adoption of Uptime. Another is to use the data collected to improve operational efficiency,” So said. “The challenge is that while people like to talk about traceability, actually getting them to pay for it is a different matter. Having said that, we do see a path through which we can create a commercially viable product.”
