Onna Okeke
Age 12 | Bradford West Gwillimbury, Ontario
This is a project submitted to Little Inventors, an educational organization inspiring young thinkers to imagine inventions and to become caring citizens of the planet.
Click here to see this project on the Little Inventors website.
What is your invention called?
My invention is called the “Fish Light”. It’s called that because it is basically a fishing net with lights on it.
What is the purpose of your invention?
My invention is designed to help the problem of overfishing by managing the amount of fish caught in the fishing net by commercial companies. Overfishing is the process of taking fish from the ocean at a rate that species cannot repopulate, and as a result leaving the species underpopulated. Whenever I go snorkeling with my families in the caribbean I love seeing all the different fish species swimming around us. They are so beautiful and elegant. If commercial companies continue to overfish no one will be able to see aquatic life and the ecosystem will crash. Other animals depend on fish species survival for food and if there are no fish other aquatic life will die off too!
How does your invention work?
My invention uses lights to decrease the amount of fish being caught in the net. The fishing net will be specially equipped with “fish lights”. Fish lights are lights small enough to attach to the net and not interrupt the flow of fish or tangle with any sea creatures. The fish lights are controlled on board with “light controls”. The fish controls will be used to change the hue, color and/or brightness of the light to either encourage or discourage certain types of fish from entering the net. The net will have holes of various sizes, depending on if you want to catch big fish or small fish.
What does your invention look like?
Picture of a boat with the fish light attached to it. Controls for the fish light are shown and fish are swimming around the net.
Name the basic components of your invention
Fish Net: The fish net is a net with small lights on it and holes of various sizes (depending on the size of fish you want to catch).
Light Controls: The Light Controls control the lights on the fishing net. They can change the color, hue and brightness of the lights.
How do you think you could measure the impact of your project?
The impact of my project can be measured by checking and monitoring the size of fish populations in the oceans. Fish species that are regularly overfished will be checked upon in areas where the fish light is used to see if it is working. Scientists and marine biologists can run tests to find out if the fish population is smaller than usual, or up to par.
What are the main problems that inspired your invention?
The main problems that inspired my invention are overfishing, dying ecosystems and extinction. Overfishing is probably the largest problem that inspired my invention because it links to the other two problems. When we overfish, ecosystems can become unbalanced and so become unhealthy. If you have too many or too few of one species, another species can go extinct. Overfishing will decrease the size of many fish populations, which may eventually lead to the extinction of some fish species. With fewer fish, the aquatic ecosystem can become unbalanced, leading to more and more aquatic life becoming endangered, or worse extinct.
Why are these problems important to you?
These problems are important to me because I hate to see aquatic ecosystems destroyed. They are not only beautiful, wonderful and diverse ecosystems, but the fish populations serve an important role in keeping aquatic ecosystems running smoothly. I would hate for the entire ecosystem to collapse because we as humans do little to nothing to stop overfishing.
Show us a picture of a waterway close to you. What is its name?
A waterway close to me that I want to keep clean is the Bradford River in Ontario.
In your opinion, what should other people do everyday to help keep the oceans clean?
We all have a part in keeping our aquatic ecosystems healthy, and everyday choices can really help with that. For one, we can all pick up after ourselves. That’s one of the most rudimentary ways of keeping pollution out of the ocean, but it really helps. Another thing that we can do to keep our oceans clean is to use less one-use plastics. These plastics pile up in our waste and can end up in our oceans harming the species things that live there.
ABOUT THE INVENTOR
My name is Onna Okeke and I am 12 years old. I was born in Brampton Ontario and raised in Bradford West Gwillimbury, which is where I currently live. I am a competitive swimmer who loves to swim indoors and outdoors in lakes and oceans. I am also very interested and immersed in robotics and coding. I have learned many coding languages and love to build cool mechanics to help with jobs around the house. I made a robot that is supposed to clean tables, but it's still not quite working! I hope to one day become a Robotics Engineer and use my talents as an engineer to build things that help people and the environment!