Some of Australia’s top hackers have turned their programming prowess to fish conservation.

‘Fishackathon’ was on at the University of New South Wales over the weekend, bringing together some of our brightest coders, software engineers and other assorted tech-heads to find digital solutions to underwater problems.

“It comes down to getting a whole group of programmers, coders, et cetera, together over a period of time to ‘hack’ or innovate, develop ideas in a short period of time,” event organiser Mitchell Kardan told reporters.

“[It is about] bringing the latest in IT design and development and bringing the problems of the world from the environmental stage together and then mixing that up over a few days and seeing what comes out.”

The event actually took place at 40 locations around the world, with the UNSW Fishackathon being just one.

The winners of the Sydney Fishackathon will be entered into a global pool, with an overall winner to be announced on June 8, World Oceans Day.

One of the judges, director of fisheries analysis at the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Dr Doug Ferrell, says good things come when different worlds are brought together.

“Fishermen like to catch fish. If we are trying to capture information about that activity to better manage them, making it something they're happy to contribute to is absolutely key in getting joint cooperation in this information gathering exercise, whatever it might be,” Dr Ferrell said.