For years crabbers in the US state of Maryland have been logging their catches with pen and paper.

That meant the authorities were only able to gather complete data about the size of each year's crab harvest every twelve months.

Now some crabbers have started using new technology to speed up the process.

The new initiative is part of a Blue Crab Design Team project that allows one to input the details of each catch in real time into a tablet computer.

Al Jazeera's John Terrett reports from Maryland.