Of the three mangrove crab species in the Philippines, Scylla serrata, or the giant mangrove crab, is capable of growing faster and bigger compared to S. tranquebarica and S. olivacea. There is no obvious morphological marker to distinguish one species from the other. Fishermen are unable to determine the species of crablets captured from the wild nor the species being sold by the traders is the one they need. Through the Practical Genomics Laboratory of De La Salle University, an application called Crabifier was developed by combining the genetic marker technology and image analysis to trace for a possible morphological method for species identification in juveniles.
Crabifier is a free and accurate Android-based mobile application that helps mangrove crab farmers identify the species of juvenile crablets of the genus Scylla. It allows the mangrove crab farmers to pick their species of choice from juveniles captured from the wild and to confirm the species being sold by the traders. This application also prevents the mangrove crab farmers from overstocking regardless of the species to compensate the expected loss and operation expansion by clearing out more mangrove areas. The use of this application can revolutionize these processes by providing a mechanism that can allow our mangrove crab farmers the option to improve their production processes.
This application basically compares the image it takes to the compressed database of images by artificial intelligence and neural networks, thus the system still learns and becomes smarter as it is fed with new images, which means it will even get more accurate over time.
CRABIFIER is free to download at Google Play and has been optimized for use in low resolution phone cameras and inexpensive Android phones. There are currently 210 active users of Crabifier.
