Mica Linscheid was born and raised in Kodiak, Alaska, U.S.A., and watched his career schoolteacher parents participate in the Bristol Bay commercial fishery each summer.
Once he was old enough, he spent seven seasons commercial fishing himself.
“I found that all my friends were commercial fishing up in Bristol Bay, and they would come back and it was just this slew of stories,” Linscheid told SeafoodSource. “It’s enthralling to people, so after my first year of setnetting, I immediately wanted to go out to Bristol Bay.”
With several summers off of school spent on the water, Linscheid found his niche to combine his academic background of computer science with the datasets and technology run by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) to develop a mobile application for fishermen created by a fisherman: Bristol Bay Run Live.
Bristol Bay Run Live aggregates data collected by ADF&G such as on-the hour announcements that come through the radio, boat counts, escapement counts by river, total runs, ADF&G’s forecast for the year, and the current progress count on that forecast. While it’s data that can be found on ADF&G’s website, Linscheid said the biggest feedback he’s gotten from users was notes of gratitude that the application was easy to use and had all of the information in one place after a long day on the sea.
“The biggest feedback I got was ‘Thank you so much. I can just look at the new boat count. I can reread the announcement because I wrote it down listening to the radio, but I don’t know where that note is. I can do it all within two minutes before I try to catch my 30 minutes of sleep,’” Linscheid said.
Linscheid's career after graduating college began as a software developer at military contractor Lockheed Martin. Now, he lives in the U.S. state of Washington and works as an AI engineer with Koniag Government Services. Developing software applications has been a passion project for the Alaskan since he was 14 years old, so finding a way to make the lives of commercial fishermen in Bristol Bay easier was a no-brainer, he said.
“This past summer, having been up there ... as a crewman, depending on who your skipper is, asking too many questions can be annoying, especially when there’s little sleep going on,” Linscheid said. “I just want to know what’s going on in the bay, even things I don’t necessarily need to know specifically. I want to know, but I really don’t have a good way to get that information. We have our inreach, but not everyone would have an inreach, so then once Starlink came on, I was like I can actually build an app and people can stay connected to this data really easily.”
The application launched in the summer of 2025, just ahead of the largest but fastest commercial fishing season in Bristol Bay. Linscheid said he allowed users to send unlimited feedback directly to him as the developer, and he took notes on each critique that came in. One of the largest was accessibility concerns over not being able to adjust the text size, which is something he said is being tweaked ahead of the 2026 season.
Typically, Bristol Bay Run Live requires a paid subscription. Executive Director of fisherman-funded organization Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA) Lilani Dunn said she noticed both the app’s value and success and knew she had to bring the notion of buying memberships for BBRSDA’s 1,800 fishermen to the board. They approved.
“The app developer had a pilot season last year, and it was really well-received. There was a firewall for our members to have it, so what we’re doing is partnering with the app developer so that it’s accessible for all fishermen without a firewall,” Dunn said at the 2026 Seafood Expo North America (SENA), which took place 15 to17 March in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. “We’re really excited about that. This is our first year partnering with the app developers. His family is part of the fishery … he has a tech background so this is a passion project that went really well for him, so we’re happy to partner with him.”
Linscheid said he was nervous to put the product out because any software application runs the risk of not meeting the market’s demand for solutions. After launching last summer, he said based on analytics that not only was there a demand for a condensed, accessible mode of live-reported data but the app also had a “sense of virality.”
He started to notice pockets of eight to 10 people in one area accessing the application at a time, leading Linscheid to deduce that word traveled quickly about the usefulness of Bristol Bay Run Live. Additionally, data is produced with only a two-minute lag, which Linscheid said would be “unacceptable” in a traditional software role but far faster for a commercial fisherman out on the water with inopportune hours to check technology.
One challenge has been working with inconsistently updated datasets, as well as outdated technology that can’t always support the work he does.
“When I think about building products … I’m not the brilliant kid pumping out code in this really beautiful way,” Linscheid said. “There are guys and gals out there who can sweep me under the rug. At the end of the day, my job is to produce value for the world.”
For Dunn, in her second year as executive director, supporting both Linscheid and funding the use of this application for all BBRSDA members was an obvious choice and one she knew would make the busy commercial fishing season even more successful. She first noticed the app last summer but became even more acquainted with the technology after Lindscheid kept emailing her updates throughout the season. Dunn added that it was important for BBRSDA to make the application available for the entire fleet because she saw the value it could provide to members. That sentiment gained full support from committee members.
“He slipped into my inbox halfway through the season, gave me an update on how it was going, and wanted to talk, and it was a really clear home run for us to partner with Mica,” Dunn said. “There was already a pilot, a lot of it was established [and] super easy to work with, and [Mica’s] someone that actually has fished more than five seasons, so [he] understands the nuances and what would be helpful.”
The passion project has brought a sense of fulfillment for Linscheid, who said it was worth pouring his nights and weekends into perfecting from February 2025 until the launch that summer. His love for commercial fishing, coupled with his desire to fix problems with technological solutions, naturally generated an avenue to mold his two worlds of software development with his fond memories of commercial fishing in Bristol Bay.
