News & Views

Global Fishing Watch launches new technology to enhance ocean management

News & Views, Press Release / By

Groundbreaking portal harnesses open data and machine learning to help transform management and research for critical marine areas Washington, D.C. — Global Fishing Watch has launched an innovative technology portal to help strengthen management of marine protected areas (MPAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). The portal hosts diverse datasets and analysis tools to […]

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Fishing Vessel Transparency is Part of the Solution for Nature Protection in the Mediterranean and Black Sea

Fisheries, Impacts, News & Views, Policy & Compliance / By

Innovative techniques for monitoring fishing activity can help protect marine biodiversity Fishing is woven into the social, economic and cultural fabric of the Mediterranean. For millennia, it’s been a way of life for those residing in coastal communities, while seafood itself has played a fundamental role in local diets. Fisheries in the Mediterranean and Black

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Global Fishing Watch and Brazil sign agreement to increase fisheries transparency

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Brazil commits to sharing vessel data on public platform, strengthening compliance in Latin American waters. Washington, D.C. – The Brazilian government has declared its commitment to share vessel tracking data on Global Fishing Watch’s platform, increasing the governance of vessels operating within its all jurisdictional waters and enhancing fisheries transparency throughout the region.  The agreement

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The Overlooked Impact of Bottom Trawling

Fisheries, Impacts, News & Views, Research and analysis / By

A new study published by the scientific journal Nature is the first to quantify the potential release of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ocean from trawling and finds that trawling is pumping hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into the ocean every year. Juan Mayorga, marine scientist and study coauthor, talks about the groundbreaking

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Close encounters between albatross and fishing vessels in the North Pacific

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In September of 2016, Leigh Torres, associate professor at Oregon State University, and I attended the 6th International Albatross and Petrel Conference. Somehow, amid all of the science that filled the week, Leigh first saw the Global Fishing Watch fishing map. She shouted with joy. She immediately envisioned a study to assess interactions between seabirds

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Half the Ocean: Updating The Global Footprint of Fisheries

Data and technology, Fisheries, News & Views / By

Global Fishing Watch’s updated fishing data offers new insight into the presence and behavior of the global fishing fleet In 2018, we published the first-ever global assessment of commercial fishing activity in Science. We tracked over 60,000 fishing vessels between 2012 and 2016, and estimated that fishing occurred on more than half of the ocean. 

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New Fishing Data Paves the Way for Improved Analysis

Data and technology, News & Views / By

Improvements to our fishing effort data and vessel classification can help promote transparency of human activity on the world’s oceans In 2018, Global Fishing Watch released its first public fishing effort data that included almost 142 million hours of fishing from over 73,000 unique maritime mobile service identity (MMSI) numbers. The dataset, spanning 2012-2016, represented

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COVID-19 Brings Unmatched Downturn in Global Fishing Activity

Data and technology, Fisheries, News & Views / By

One year into the pandemic that triggered turmoil around the world, an analysis of Global Fishing Watch data sheds light on shifts in global fishing activity  As the world marks the March 11th anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fishing sector—like many industries—continues to feel the effects. With our

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Costa Rica Boats

Latin America Highlights Transparency as Essential in Tackling Illegal Fishing

Fisheries, News & Views, Policy & Compliance / By

Countries embrace transparency-based strategy to promote fair and effective ocean governance The 34th Session of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Committee on Fisheries (COFI 34) was held virtually last week. Front and center of the agenda was the need to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, a practice which accounts

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Sushi

New poll reveals demand for seafood traceability and public vessel tracking

Impacts, News & Views, Policy & Compliance / By

Oceana calls on U.S. government to reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in the US seafood supply chain The largest ocean-focused advocacy group, Oceana, released results from a new poll revealing that 83 percent of Americans agree that all seafood should be traceable from the fishing boat to the dinner plate, and 77 percent support

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Illegal fishing by dark fleets in north korea

A 2020 Analysis: Detecting the Dark Fleets in North Korea and Russia

Data and technology, Fisheries, News & Views, Research and analysis / By

Satellite technology reveals decline in illegal fishing activity in North Korean and Russian waters compared to previous years  In July 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was sweeping across the globe, Global Fishing Watch published a groundbreaking scientific paper revealing one of the largest known cases of illegal fishing. The foreign fishing activity detected across 2017-19

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Tuna transshipment in the Indian Ocean

New Study Unveils Risk of Forced Labor in Fisheries

Data and technology, Fisheries, News & Views, Research and analysis / By

Researchers leverage satellite data, machine learning, and human rights expertise to develop model that determines risk of forced labor on fishing vessels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5gWgYoR_rU In 2016 our research group at the Environmental Market Solutions Lab (emLab) was collaborating with a team of fisheries scientists and economists to better understand the economic rationale behind fishing on the

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Satellites can reveal risk of forced labor in the world’s fishing fleet

Satellites can reveal risk of forced labor in the world’s fishing fleet

News & Views, Press Release / By

Groundbreaking model uses remote sensing data, machine learning, and human rights expertise to shed light on slavery at sea  Washington, D.C. – Vessels known to have crew that are subject to forced labor behave in systematically different ways to the rest of the global fishing fleet, reveals a new paper published today in the scientific

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