Inventions that Save Marine Life: QR Codes

By Emily Tripp

QR codes on seafood. It’s that simple. Scan the code with your smartphone and you will meet the captain of the vessel who caught that fish. Another tab lets you see the vessel, and a third lets you meet the dealer.

The Fish Trax Marketplace, developed by Advanced Research Corp. (ARC), was designed “to build a community, open up communication and foster sustainable practices,” ARC president John Lavrakas told The Oregonian.

Dealers enter information about the fishermen they work with and the vessels used on the Fish Trax Marketplace website. The dealer then buys the fish and records the species, name of vessel, where it was caught, and who it was caught by, along with their personal information. That info is used to generate a QR code which gets printed on menus where customers can scan it. The QR codes help the public to know exactly where their fish came from and make sustainable choices, while allowing fishermen to get feedback from the public.

Fish Trax Marketplace is currently used in five US states and internationally. Learn more here.

One sushi restaurant in San Diego, California, Harney Sushi, is going a step further, putting edible QR codes directly on the fish. The codes are printed on rice paper with water-based ink. Learn more here.

Emily Tripp is the publisher and editor of MarineScienceToday.com, an online magazine about what's in, on, and around the oceans. She holds marine science and biology degrees from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.