For New Zealand commercial divers and fishers
Know before you get wet.
New Zealand's fishing rules are scattered across marine reserves, taiāpure, mātaitai, temporary closures and size and species limits. None of it was written to be read on a boat. Catch Log does that reading for you and gives one answer for the water you are floating over: yes, no, or check first.
That part is free. Skipper is the paid part, and what it does is keep what you record: your marks, your catches, the ground you have worked. Without it the app answers the spot you are on and stores nothing.
A first check, not the last word: it shows you where is closed, not whether a catch is legal, and coverage is still growing. Where the app and the official rules disagree, go with the rules. Read the full terms.
What you get
One answer, in a sentence, not a section number.
Pick what you are fishing for. The chart redraws to show only the closures that apply to that choice. Tap anywhere and you get a plain-English reason, and a link to the official rule behind it for when you want to check.
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No, you cannot fish here
You are inside a closed area for at least one of the things you ticked. The banner names which one.
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Check before you start
A rule applies here that depends on something the app cannot see, such as a permit or a season.
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Yes, open here
Nothing you ticked is closed at this spot today. Rules resolve against the date the map was built.
Where it is up to
I am still working through the closed areas, patch by patch.
The closures are built from the official data and rebuilt every day, but turning the wording of a rule into a line on a map is fiddly work, and I am still checking it area by area. If something looks wrong on ground you know, that is the single most useful thing anyone can tell me.
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If it looks wrong
Tell me and I will look at it
An area shut that you know is open, one open that should be shut, a boundary sitting in the wrong place. You know your ground better than any map does. There is no form: tell me roughly where and what you expected to see, and I will go back to the official rule and check it.
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Where it comes from
MPI, DOC and LINZ, rebuilt daily
Marine reserves, taiāpure, mātaitai, temporary closures and the commercial rules, taken straight from what MPI, DOC and LINZ put out. Every closure links to the official rule behind it, so you can check my working rather than take my word for it. Where the app and the rule disagree, the rule is right.
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When it cannot tell
It shuts rather than guesses
Where a rule is written in a way the app cannot read cleanly, the area is marked closed and queued for me to read by hand. That way, when it gets something wrong, it costs you a wasted trip rather than a fine. It is also why you will sometimes see a closure that looks over-cautious.
How to use it
Built for one hand, cold fingers and no signal.
The whole thing is designed around the fact that the moment you most need to log something is the moment your hands are busiest.
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Download the area before you leave
Settings downloads the rules and the chart for 25, 50 or 100 km around you, and tells you how big that is before it starts. After that the app needs no signal at all.
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Tick what you are doing
Species and method. Pāua diving, commercial. Tick several if you are after several; the chart shows the combined closures. Save the combinations you use often and switch between them in a tap.
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Check the spot
Locate yourself, or tap anywhere on the chart. One banner answers. If a closed area is within 50 m the app says so, because GPS drifts and the boundary does not.
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Log as you go
Dropping a mark or a catch takes a tap or two and asks nothing else of you. The rating, the note and the photo can wait until you are back on shore.
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Fill in the detail later
Rate a visit poor, ok or great, add a line about what the ground was like, attach a photo. Capture and annotation are separate steps on purpose.
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Back it up when you have signal
Everything sits safe on the phone until it can send. Photos wait for wifi and never go over mobile data.
On the boat
Five screens, each answering one question.
The app is coming to the App Store and Google Play. Right now it is with a handful of divers trying it on real trips before it opens up.
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Map
Can I fish here?
Your position on the nautical chart, the closures that apply to what you ticked, and a straight answer wherever you tap.
- Why an area is closed, and the rule it comes from
- Statistical area and minimum harvest size for pāua
- Warning before you cross into a closure, screen off
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Marks Skipper
What did I find here?
Marks file your history by place. Drop a pin once and every visit to it collects underneath it: this trip, next season, the one after.
- Rating, note and one photo per visit
- Whether a spot has been consistent or gone quiet
- Bring in the marks you already have from a plotter or another app
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Routes Skipper
Where did I go?
The same records filed by day. Start the track at the beginning of a trip and it runs with the phone in a pocket.
- Distance, time and everything logged that day
- Play a day's track back on the chart
- 30-day undo on a deleted catch
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Areas Skipper
What is this ground worth?
Draw a shape around a patch and put your own read on it: good ground here, or worked out, don't bother.
- Drawn by hand, not guessed from your track
- A note per area, readable in the list
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Settings
Does this phone still know?
Answers two questions: how old the downloaded rules are, and whether what you logged has made it off the phone yet.
- The download for your area, with its size shown before you start
- A date on the rules, never a silent green tick
- Send yourself a file of everything you have logged, and see what is in it first
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Account
Do I need one?
Not for the closures. The map, your position and the answer work with no account at all, because putting a sign-up wall in front of the one thing that keeps a diver out of a marine reserve would be the wrong trade.
An account is what lets the phone keep anything. Without one it answers the spot you tapped and stores nothing.
- Free account: a download for offline use, saved species and gear
- Skipper: everything you record, kept and backed up
Want to try it before it is on the stores?
It is built and it runs. Before it goes on the App Store and Google Play I want commercial divers using it on real trips and telling me what is wrong with it. iPhone or Android, either works.
If that is you, get in touch and I will set you up. No cost, and no obligation to stay on it once it is public.
Ask about trying the appOn shore · part of Skipper
The dashboard is for the desk, not the deck.
A mark dropped on the boat this morning is open on your screen by the time you are back at the desk, and a correction made at the desk is on the phone the next time it finds signal. One record of your fishing, not two copies to keep in step.
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Everything at once
A season on one chart
Every mark, catch and drawn area across every trip, rather than one day at a time. Ground that keeps producing and ground that has gone quiet are a shape you can see, on a screen big enough to see it on.
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Editing
Fix what wet fingers got wrong
Drag a pin to where it should have been, reshape a drawn area corner by corner, retype a note with a real keyboard. Fixes flow straight back to the phone.
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Numbers
Totals, not a list of pins
Catch by species, how ground performed over a season, which marks produced more than once. It turns the diary from a personal log into numbers you can actually review.
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Filters
One date range, everywhere
Narrow the map, the numbers and the record list to this trip, this season or a range you pick. All three move together, so they always describe the same window.
What costs money
Checking what is closed is free. Keeping a record of your fishing is what you pay for.
The closure map stays free whatever happens to the rest of it. Putting a paywall in front of the one feature that keeps a diver out of a marine reserve would be the wrong trade, and I am not going to make it.
Skipper is the rest of it. It keeps a record of your own fishing, which is the part I think is worth paying for and the part I am still building out. The closure map does not depend on it and never will.
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Free
Open now
Open the map and use it. An account is free too, and is what lets the phone hold a download and remember what you fish for.
- The closure map for the fisheries we cover
- Your position on the chart
- A straight answer on any spot you tap, and the rule behind it
- A download for where you fish, so it works with no signal, with a free account
It answers the spot you are on and keeps nothing. There is no diary on this tier, so nothing you do in it is saved.
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Skipper
Not open yet
$XX a month when it opens. Free while it is being trialled.
Everything above, plus a record of your fishing that persists. Drop a mark on a patch of ground and every visit to it collects underneath: a catch with its species and size, a photo, a note on what the ground was like. Draw an area around a reef and put your own read on it. It is all still there next season.
- Marks, catches, drawn areas and recorded tracks
- Backup and sync between phone and dashboard, so the record survives a lost phone
- The web dashboard: a season on one chart, totals, and editing with a real keyboard
- Send yourself a file of everything you have logged, yours to keep
- Bring in the marks you already have from a plotter or another app
Whether that is worth it depends on your own numbers. If it saves you a day a season working ground another boat has already been over, it has paid for itself.
It is built and running, but not open for sign-ups while I get it right. I would rather a handful of divers put it through a real season and tell me what is wrong with it than open the doors and find out afterwards. No cost while it is being trialled, and no obligation to stay on it.
Ask about trialling it
The person behind it
I built this so the rules are easy to find on the water.
I work with location data and fishing rules. At MPI I built the fishing closures, and I saw how much work goes into turning the wording of a rule into an accurate area on a map. The harder part comes after that: getting the rule in front of the person floating over that patch of water.
Since then I have been contracting with the Pāua Industries Council, making maps for screens and for the wall, and helping communities set up their own voluntary closures. Part of that is keeping the minimum harvest size up to date for the statistical areas around the country. It is one of the ways the industry gives pāua a chance to spawn before they are taken, and it only works if the number reaches the diver.
Working alongside divers made the gap plain. They want to get it right, and one spot can sit under a marine reserve, a taiāpure, a mātaitai or a temporary notice, each of them written up on its own.
I built Catch Log to do that last step. It pulls all of that official data together and gives one plain-English answer for any spot you tap.
The app also keeps a record of what you find. Drop a mark on a patch of ground and every visit collects under it: a catch with its weight and species, a photo, a note on what the ground was like. Draw an area around a reef and attach your own read on it. A catch can carry the tide, wind and swell you were working in, set once with three taps and stamped on everything you log after it, so a season of diving becomes something you can look back over instead of trying to remember.
Your catches, marks and drawn areas stay private to your account. They are never pooled or shared. What they give you is a read on your own ground over time: which spots keep producing, which have gone quiet, how a season really went, so the next call you make on the water is better informed.
If you hold closure or fishing rule data, it can go on this map
The map carries what MPI, DOC and LINZ publish. If you are an iwi, a rūnanga, a regional council, a management committee or an agency with closures or rules of your own, those can go on it too, and you decide who they are shown to: everyone, the fishers you work with, or a community you name.
Voluntary closures and agreed harvest sizes are the ones this matters most for. They carry no gazette notice and no published layer, so the people they apply to often never see them on a chart at all. I would rather that data reached those people than sat in a PDF.
If that sounds like something you hold, get in touch and I will talk you through what it takes to put it on here.
Talk about adding your dataStart here
Check a spot before you take our word for any of this.
The closure map needs no account and no download. Pick what you are after, tap the water you are thinking about, and see what it says. Check it against a patch you know well first, and tell me if it gets that one wrong.
If it holds up on ground you know, have a look at Skipper. That is the part that keeps what you record.
Three things I would genuinely like to hear about: a closure that looks wrong, anyone who wants to put the Skipper diary through a season before it opens properly, and any body holding closure or rule data that should be on this map. Either way, email me and it comes straight to me, not to a support queue.