Cape Cod Bay & the outer Atlantic shelf
Lobster Trap Mapping Mesh Network
An offline, peer-to-peer fleet mesh that logs trap coordinates, syncs ropeless gear references boat-to-boat, and carries right whale mitigation alerts across the fleet—entirely independent of cellular towers or internet access at sea.
All fp Mesh Networks are connected by the same radio-cellphone hybrid app.
The current bottleneck
Captains bear the operational risk, offshore
Fuel costs, gear liability, and whale-protection mandates have all tightened at once—while the tools captains rely on to track gear go dark the moment a vessel drops over the horizon.
Longer offshore runs to the outer shelf burn margin before a single trap is hauled.
Entanglement exposure and federal mandates shift real operational risk onto individual captains.
Cellular towers drop the moment a vessel clears the horizon, so standard tracking apps stop working exactly when they're needed.
Subsurface, acoustic-triggered trap lines remove the surface buoy captains have relied on to relocate gear.
A shared ledger that works with no cell signal
A browser-native PWA hooks into the Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth radios already built into fleet smartphones. Dropping a string logs its coordinate locally; passing boats carry that record horizontally across the fleet, half a mile at a time.
When a string of pots goes over, the near-geospatial coordinate block is logged locally on the vessel—no cellular or internet connection required to record it.
Logged strings hop horizontally from vessel to vessel over Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth as boats pass within range, building a shared ledger of gear positions across the fleet.
Acoustic-release trap strings are tied to the same logged coordinate, giving a crew a documented reference point for triggering and relocating subsurface gear.
Because the ledger is shared across the mesh, captains can see where other logged strings already sit before setting new gear in a sector.
Right whale mitigation
A sighting travels the mesh ahead of the whale
The same horizontal mesh that carries shark-detection and deterrent signals carries right whale tracking vectors—warning boats before gear goes in the water near a flagged sector.
- 01Sighting logged
A spotting plane, research vessel, or ocean glider records a right whale tracking vector.
- 02Packet broadcast
The warning propagates horizontally across the fleet mesh, hopping vessel to vessel ahead of the animal's path.
- 03Sector flagged
Boats approaching the affected sector receive an alert before setting pots in that area.
- 04Captain decides
The crew—not the app—chooses whether to pause, reroute, or hold gear based on the flagged sector and their own judgment.
- 05Compliance record
A time-stamped record of the alert and the sector supports gear-mitigation compliance reporting.
Real-time visualization
Trap strings and thermoclines through AR
While the mesh routes coordinate and sighting data offline, captains and deckhands view their offshore array through an AR headset. Coordinate-locked overlays trace subterranean trap strings, bottom-temperature thermoclines, and whale path markers directly onto the water or through the hull.
Trap string paths
Coordinate-locked lines trace each logged subsurface string beneath the hull, down to the reference point captains recorded.
Bottom-temperature thermoclines
Layered thermocline bands are rendered against recorded bottom-temperature readings to help locate active migration channels.
Whale path markers
Flagged right whale sectors from the fleet mesh appear as coordinate-locked boundary markers over the water.
Gear reference points
Retrieval and trigger reference points for ropeless strings are shown at 1:1 scale relative to the vessel's position.
What a captain sees on approach
A conceptual view of the same information surfaced on a phone or tablet without a headset—useful for planning a run before gear ever goes over the rail.
Gear strings
Logged
Sector status
No flags
Decision
Captain controlled
Deployment reality
Designed around the fishery, not dropped into it
Trap mapping, ropeless triggers, and whale mitigation all carry real regulatory weight. The mesh supports the record-keeping and communication—captains remain responsible for compliance.
- Bottom type, current, tide, and depth all affect how reliably a logged coordinate maps to gear on later retrieval
- Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth mesh range depends on line-of-sight and vessel spacing, not guaranteed fleet-wide coverage
- Right whale sector alerts depend entirely on the timeliness and accuracy of the sighting that triggered them
- Federal gear-marking, ropeless-trigger, and closure rules vary by season and region and must be followed regardless of what the mesh reports