Fisheries

Subsistence fisher returning in Kiritimati Island.

Life Below Water: Ensuring sustainable consumption and production of seafood

Fisheries, News & Views, Policy & Compliance / By

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 impact

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saltelite

Detecting Dark Fishing Activity in the North Natuna Sea

Data and technology, Fisheries, News & Views, Policy & Compliance / By

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 Fisheries

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Chile & Peru VMS

Chile Shows Global Leadership On Fisheries Transparency

Fisheries, Impacts, News & Views, Transparency / By

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 is a wake-up call for the planet. The biggest

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ocean scene

Fast-tracking Law-abiding Ships at Ports Could Help End Illegal Fishing

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

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 nearly

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Tuna Marine Protection

The Rewards of Large-Scale Marine Protection

Fisheries, Research and analysis / By

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 and coastline stabilization are only a few of them. So, why do Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) cover only 4.8% of the ocean today? When it

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Peruvian artisanal vessel capturing giant squid

Peru expands vessel tracking system to show activity of two large artisanal fishing fleets

Fisheries, Transparency / By

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. The

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Challenges an opportunities - Global Atlas of AIS - based fishing activity

The Global Atlas of AIS-based Fishing Activity

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

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. These new methods, though, had yet to be vetted by the

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Xing Hua Sheng NO669

On the frontline against illegal fishing in the world’s biggest ocean

Fisheries, Impacts, News & Views / By

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 24

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Vessel track

Are unauthorized foreign vessels deterred from fishing inside Exclusive Economic Zones?

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

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 and economic outcomes, EEZs could be an important institution for improving the sustainability and profitability

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Commonwealth Club The Global Fishing Watch Research Program

Breakthroughs in Science: The Global Fishing Watch Research Program

Data and technology, Fisheries, Research and analysis / By

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 been

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Rhythms of the wild in global fisheries data

Fisheries, Research and analysis / By

Eric Galbraith is an ICREA research professor based at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Jerome Guiet is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. Read their new study. Most of the activity that Global Fishing Watch monitors is carried out by industrial fisheries, working for profit. These businesses are run and staffed

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Anchovy boats peru

World’s largest commercial fishery publicly tracked on Global Fishing Watch map

Fisheries, News & Views, Transparency / By

This year’s first fishing season for Peruvian anchovy opens on May 4th and for the first time ever anyone can track the fishing fleet as the season progresses, thanks to the recent agreement to publish Peru’s vessel data via Global Fishing Watch’s public map. En español Monitoring of the Peruvian anchovy fleet using the national Vessel Tracking

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Ton Bali

Global Fishing Watch 2018 – the year in transparency

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

After just over a year at the helm, Global Fishing Watch CEO, Tony Long, reflects on how a freely accessible and near real-time digital map of the global ocean is exposing illegal fishing and changing the rules of the game, and calls on all governments to contribute data and join the movement for universal transparency.

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oceana team

How Oceana used Global Fishing Watch data to promote transparency at sea during 2018

Data and technology, Fisheries, Impacts, News & Views, Policy & Compliance / By

With increased transparency, we can see beyond the horizon and address the threats facing our oceans. Global Fishing Watch’s (GFW) mapping platform increases the transparency of commercial fishing activities worldwide, empowering Oceana and others to expose problems that were once out of sight, far from our coasts. Oceana analysts, part of Oceana’s Illegal Fishing and

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