Banda Aceh, 1 November 2019 – Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh agreed to start collaborative research and development in the fisheries and marine sector in Indonesia. The Memorandum of Understanding which marked a two-year collaboration was signed by representatives of each party on October 22, 2019 at the Faculty of […]
Lee la nota de prensa en español Peru first in Latin America and second in the world Since October 26, 2018, our country made available the VMS tracking data of vessels fishing on its shoreline The data are on the Global Fishing Watch platform and aim to prevent and confront illegal fishing On October 26, it
Peru has demonstrated global leadership in sharing its fisheries surveillance data Read More »
There are several reasons a vessel may appear more than once in the search results. If a vessel is present in both AIS and VMS datasets, we will show one result per activity layer in which the vessel is present. When you search for a vessel, the source layer will be displayed. A vessel may
Why do multiple vessels show up when I search for a vessel? Read More »
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Please visit our login page here and click “Forgot your password?” on the bottom of the page. This will direct you to reset your password.
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The VIIRS satellite sensor can identify bright lights at night. This is the same sensor that is used to make the maps of lights at night of the world that you may have seen. In the dark ocean, vessels using bright lights stand out to this sensor and can be tracked. Some forms of fishing,
How can I interpret night light detections (VIIRS) data in the map? Read More »
An exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is a zone in the ocean in which the adjacent nation has jurisdiction. These generally include waters extending 200 nautical miles from a nation’s coastline but are also drawn closer in where multiple nation’s jurisdictions would otherwise overlap. Each country has special rights regarding exploration and use of resources within
What is the significance of the EEZs? Read More »
The large circles without fishing are almost always exclusive economic zones (EEZs) around islands that heavily restrict or prohibit fishing (if you toggle on the EEZs Layer in the Global Fishing Watch map, you will see that they often match with these blank areas). The circles could also be marine protected areas (MPAs) that prohibit
Why are there large circles in which there is no apparent fishing? Read More »
Some marine protected areas restrict only certain types of fishing (e.g. trawl fishing) but allow other types of fishing. Some fishing vessels also use multiple different gear types for fishing, which may lead to differences in how fishing is represented in the map for this vessel. Some marine protected areas are at varying stages of
Why is there fishing in an area marked as an MPA? Read More »
Global Fishing Watch sources a marine protected areas (MPA) reference layer from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). Some marine protected areas are at varying stages of designation and implementation, and therefore may not be visible in the Global Fishing Watch map.
Why am I not seeing certain marine protected areas in the Global Fishing Watch map? Read More »
Vessel names are taken directly from the AIS message of vessel broadcasts. Transmitters sometimes have errors or are not always properly configured. In some cases, we are able to match vessels to fishing registries and will use the name from there.
Why are vessel names sometimes garbled or blank? Read More »
Global Fishing Watch believes that transparency of fishing activity is key to achieving sustainable global fisheries. In line with our mission to create and publicly share knowledge about human activity at sea, the first versions of our map have focused on fishing as the most widespread human activity, and on industrial fishing as the sector
Does the Global Fishing Watch map include small scale fishing? Read More »
No. Some commercial fishing fleets are already using sophisticated technology such as helicopters, tracking beacons, fish-finding sonar and even fish forecasts based on satellite data to find and catch fish. Global Fishing Watch shows apparent fishing activity; it doesn’t predict where fish are likely to be in the future. The near real time lag for
Will this tip off the fishing industry to where all the fish are? Read More »
The VMS data remains under the ownership of the respective national authorities and we cannot release it publicly beyond displaying it on our map.
Can I download raw VMS data? Read More »
The raw AIS data we use is commercial data and we cannot make it freely available to the public. However, we have created a sample dataset of labeled anonymized AIS data that can be used to train fishing prediction models.
Can I download raw AIS data? Read More »
