There are severagadgets and smartphone applications that provide fishermen with weather alerts and potential fishing zones, but none to help authorities locate them at sea. An app developed by city-based National Centre for Coastal Research will soon fill that lacuna. Fisher’s Buddy will provide authorities the number and location of fishing boats at sea at any given time to help plan rescue operations. For fishermen, it will provide a simple digital history of the locations travelled and the catch brought home apart from regular weather updates. NCCR is set to test the app at Urur Olcott Kuppam, a fishing hamlet in Besant Nagar, next month. “State departments have all fishing community-related data, but it is not in ready-to-use digital format for them to take decisions. During Cyclone Ockhi, the state authorities and Indian Coast Guard did not know the number of boats at sea,” said Tune Usha, an NCCR scientist specialising in GIS applications, image processing and tsunami hazard mapping. As long fishermen remain in the mobile network coverage area, the app will record and send their locations to a central server.