When we built 20Echo, we knew we were undertaking a task that people have been trying to master since the beginning of civilization. How can we better understand the best time to hunt and fish to capitalize on time on the water or in the field? In our preliminary research, we started at the beginning and noticed that people have been trying to pattern fish and game forever. Even the first fishing logs drawn in caves show Native Americans knew certain times were better for fishing and hunting. These drawings and other examples show that humans have learned that life is more active around dawn and dusk and when the moon is full or new for millennia.
As time pressed forward, researchers discovered that the moon also played a role in controlling ocean behavior. The discovery of tides made the sun and moon the cornerstones for the earliest forms of the fishing calendars and fishing logs. It was not until 1926 that someone put the methodology in place to begin leveraging this information, enter Solunar Tables.
In May 1926, John Alden Knight compiled 33 factors that influenced both fresh and saltwater fish’s natural behavior. In his experiments, all but three of these factors were disproven in the capacities he was testing. The only three factors left standing were the sun, moon, and tide. Knight’s realized that the sun, moon, and tide were related, so he built what he called the “Solunar Tables.” These tables were first published in 1936 and were the source of major and minor feeding times. He proved his tables by creating a fishing log of 200 record catches showing that 90% were during his predefined major and minor cycles and while the moon was new. Yahtzee… Knight was on to something!
A Biologist later supported Knight’s major & minor theory at Northwestern University in Chicago. This Biologist, Dr. Frank A. Brown, became fascinated with the ocean’s biological rhythm at a young age after catching rare shrimp off a dock. He went back every night and did not see the shrimp again until precisely one lunar month later. He noticed this and devoted his life to understanding why. Later, Dr. Brown had live oysters flown into his lab in Chicago to prove his theories on the ocean’s rhythm. It is common knowledge that oysters open their shells at each high tide to feed, and Dr. Brown wanted to see if this was caused by local changes in water flow (tide) or, as John Knight hypothesized, from Solunar influences.
By taking the oysters out of their natural rhythm and environment for a week, he discovered that the organisms changed their opening and closing behavior when the moon was directly overhead and underfoot in Chicago. Making things more fascinating, the oysters were not outside and were now in a different time zone, meaning that light and electromagnetic influence were not contributing factors. Dr. Brown concluded that this is only possible if organisms have subtle ways of sensing external environmental changes “right through the laboratory walls.” He said that “All life is probably clued to its local circumstances in ways more intimately and more subtly than we can even measure, and when the locality is changed, life senses that.”
How? Parts of this are still a mystery, but like the drawings and tables that came before, 20Echo takes patterning to a level never before possible. We harness the power of every external environmental condition available and tag them to your pictures generating echoes from that exact location. These echoes allow you never to forget and instantly compare everything for the ultimate environmental leverage…Instinct like leverage previously reserved for ocean rhythm, oysters, and tables.
DM
20Echo uses patent-pending technology to harness your pictures’ power to form an instantaneous journal of your surrounding environmental conditions that is intuitive and simple to use. We allow users to snap photos with mobile devices and instantly capture an automatic log that will help you catch more fish and better understand why and when things happen. Click to LEARN MORE. Additional FAQS
