One of world's biggest fishing nations faces economic setbacks, turns to artisanal fleet for food security This is the second blog in a series on the effects of COVID-19 on global fishing activity. Read our initial analysis of changes in global fishing activity during the pandemic here. According to the Global Fishing Watch database, [...]
Recovery from COVID-19 will require greater transparency in commercial fishing activity Tony Long, CEO Global Fishing Watch As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, its myriad negative consequences are slowly becoming clearer. While many of the impacts have been unmistakable, with entire countries locked down, some are playing out far away [...]
Two months ago, the death of fisheries observer Eritara Aati Kaierua was reported in Pacific waters, leading to an ongoing murder investigation. For many people, the idea of a murder taking place on board a confined fishing vessel out at sea seems inconceivable, but for those that know the fisheries sector well, it is [...]
Large scale, commercial fishing activity has often historically taken place out of sight - fishing grounds far from shore make them difficult and costly to monitor, jurisdiction considerations impede governance and a patchwork of regulations have not kept pace with advances in fishing technologies. As our global seafood consumption has increased, so has the [...]
On March 1st 2020, Indonesian authorities seized five Vietnamese vessels fishing illegally in the North Natuna Sea, located south west of Indonesia’s Natuna Islands, which borders the South China Sea. The successful operation was conducted by patrol vessels from the Indonesian Directorate General (DG) of Surveillance (PSDKP) of The Ministry of Marine Affairs and [...]
Tony Long, CEO, Global Fishing Watch Once again, Chile shows it is serious about ocean protection. Putting its fishing vessel tracking data on Global Fishing Watch’s public platform will help to build more transparent and sustainable fisheries. The May 2019 United Nations report warning of unprecedented rates of extinction of marine life [...]
by Nicola Frost, Tony Long, Stephanie Juwana and Mansi Konar When the UN launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) five years ago, the world aligned around the need to end illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing by 2020 (SDG 14.4). Seen then as an achievable target, it is now a deadline we’re going to miss. IUU fishing accounts for [...]
Juan Carlos is a PhD Student at UC Santa Barbara where he combines economics, technology, and data science to study marine conservation. To conserve or not to conserve Protecting large portions of our oceans from extractive activities can provide enormous benefits to society: food provisioning, carbon storage and sequestration, tourism, storm attenuation [...]
By April 2020, some 750 artisanal fishing vessels targeting jumbo flying squid and mahi-mahi are expected to join the Peruvian Vessel Monitoring System (VMS). As these vessels - 365 so far - are newly incorporated into Peru’s VMS, they will also appear for the first time on the public Global Fishing Watch (GFW) map. [...]
In 2018, Global Fishing Watch (GFW) published the first ever global maps of fishing activity using AIS data. These fishing maps drew on billions of GPS positions broadcast by over 60,000 fishing vessels, and they revealed fishing operations in all oceans in incredible detail. Click on the image to access the atlas. [...]
Global Fishing Watch data assists US Coast Guard patrol in the Pacific. The 2019 patrol produced a threefold increase in vessel boardings and an eightfold increase in identified violations compared to 2018. Captain Adam Morrison has 12 years of experience patrolling the oceans of the world with the United States Coast Guard (USCG) during his [...]
Gabriel Englander, PhD candidate, University of California, Berkeley. Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics. Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) are perhaps the largest property rights institution in the world, covering about 39% of the ocean’s surface and accounting for more than 95% of global marine fish catch. Because assigning property rights can improve both ecological [...]
Eric D Galbraith, professor at McGill University and associate faculty at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, shares his journey to a new paper, Growth Limitation of Marine Fish by Low Iron Availability in the Open Ocean, that harnesses Global Fishing Watch data with a healthy dose of collaboration and curiosity. The story of this [...]
Global Fishing Watch recently met with port authorities and offered training on its commercial fishing activity platform in three important Peruvian fishing ports (Paita, Chimbote and Callao). Fisheries Analyst, Eloy Aroni, describes in this blog post how these meetings were an opportunity to discuss data and technology solutions to the main issues affecting each [...]
Why is Global Fishing Watch (GFW), a non-profit organization, investing so much effort into collaborating with scientists to publish research papers? And why has the program been so successful in doing so? In this blog, GFW Research and Innovation Director, David Kroodsma outlines why we are pursuing this work, why he believes it has [...]
