From hire to recovery: visibility across Shark Bay
Monkey Mia Boat Hire operates a fleet of hire vessels across the Shark Bay region of Western Australia, giving customers the freedom to explore, fish and enjoy the waters around Monkey Mia. With boats able to travel considerable distances from shore, live GPS tracking gives the team valuable visibility across customer safety, vessel recovery and day-to-day asset management.
The Challenge
When customers take a hire vessel out onto the waters around Shark Bay, they can travel a considerable distance from shore. That makes knowing where each boat is especially important when a vessel is overdue, stops moving or ends up somewhere unexpected.
If a customer is late returning, the team needs information quickly. Being able to establish where the vessel is and whether it is still moving gives them a much clearer picture of the situation before deciding whether their overdue-vessel and safety procedures need to be implemented.
The same visibility is important from an asset-protection perspective. Boats can drift, break down or end up far from where they were expected to be, and locating a relatively small vessel across a large area of ocean can otherwise become extremely difficult.
Monkey Mia Boat Hire wanted a system that was reliable enough to provide useful location information when it was genuinely needed, while remaining straightforward for the team to use throughout normal day-to-day operations.
The Solution
Monkey Mia Boat Hire needed a GPS tracking system that was reliable, easy to use and, most importantly, available when the information genuinely mattered. With the trackers being fitted to working hire vessels, the hardware also needed to be IP rated and suited to the more demanding conditions of a marine environment.
BlackOwl gives the team access to live vessel locations and tracking history, allowing them to see where a boat is, where it has travelled and whether it is moving.
During a normal hire, that visibility helps with day-to-day fleet management. If a customer becomes overdue, the tracker can be checked to establish the vessel’s location and movement before the team decides whether its overdue-vessel or other safety procedures need to be implemented.
The trackers use Telstra LTE-M (Cat-M1) connectivity, an IoT-focused 4G technology designed for extended coverage compared with conventional LTE devices. That makes it particularly well suited to applications such as vessel tracking, where boats may operate farther from shore. Actual connectivity still depends on Telstra coverage and local conditions.
LTE-M also provides a more future-oriented connectivity option for long-term IoT deployments, while the BlackOwl platform keeps live location and tracking history straightforward for staff to access when needed.
After proving itself across the boat-hire operation, the business is now rolling the same BlackOwl system out across its Shark Bay Car Hire vehicle fleet.
The Results
Live tracking has become an important part of both the safety and asset-management side of the operation.
If a vessel is overdue, the team can check its location and movement rather than relying solely on attempts to contact the customer. That additional information can help establish whether the vessel is still underway, stationary or somewhere it was not expected to be.
Tracking history also provides a record of where a vessel has travelled, giving Monkey Mia Boat Hire greater visibility across a fleet that can be spread over a large area of water at any given time.
Proven in the real world
Monkey Mia Boat Hire has had hire vessels drift away from the Monkey Mia and Shark Bay area and head north towards Carnarvon, leaving a relatively small boat somewhere across an enormous area of ocean.
BlackOwl tracking provided an actual location to work from, helping the team narrow the search area and locate and recover the vessels.