This article was produced and first published by our data partner, Spire Global. Transparency in a whole new light In February this year, a Vietnamese ship entered Indonesian waters, likely fished illegally, and then returned to port without consequence. By March, it was back at sea. There were no signs to indicate that the vessel […]
Illuminating global fishing activity with satellite AIS Read More »
Elena Ojea is a senior researcher at the University of Vigo where she founded the Future Oceans Lab, a Vigo-based research group on marine systems and climate change. Dr. Ojea holds an undergraduate degree in Environmental Sciences and a PhD in Economics, and was a postdoc and research fellow at the Basque Centre for Climate
Fisheries Management in the Face of Climate Change Read More »
A key goal of Global Fishing Watch is to partner with leading researchers who can help us better understand, apply, and expand the usefulness of our data for fisheries transparency. To date, we have partnered with over 12 academic institutions, as well as several government fisheries research agencies, such as Japan’s Fisheries Research Agency. Heather
A Conversation with NOAA Researchers, Heather Welch and Dr. Elliott Hazen Read More »
At Global Fishing Watch, we use cutting-edge technology to visualize, track and share data about global fishing activity in near real-time and for free. Our primary dataset comes from data about a vessel’s identity, type, location, speed, direction and more that is broadcast using the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and collected via satellites and terrestrial
Towards a Radar-Illuminated Ocean Read More »
The social, economic, and human toll of illegal fishing Illegal fishing drains fish resources from the waters of both poor and rich countries. Over $23 billion US are lost every year to illegal fishing. It is estimated that one in every four fish we consume is caught illegally. The ocean is heavily impacted as fish
Shedding a light on intruders at sea Read More »
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
The Rewards of Large-Scale Marine Protection Read More »
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
The Global Atlas of AIS-based Fishing Activity Read More »
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 paper
Does iron supply play a role in wild fish? Read More »
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
Breakthroughs in Science: The Global Fishing Watch Research Program Read More »
Nuno Queiroz and a team of over 150 scientists recently published “Global spatial risk assessment of sharks under the footprint of fisheries” in the journal Nature. Tim White, Global Fishing Watch Fisheries Scientist, was a co-author of this study. Sharks of the open-ocean are some of the most threatened fish in the sea; around 75%
Tracking where sharks and ship overlap Read More »
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
Rhythms of the wild in global fisheries data Read More »
Tim White is a PhD candidate at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station. His recent publication in Science Advances, Predicted hotspots of overlap between highly migratory fishes and industrial fishing fleets in the Northeast Pacific, focuses on how vessel tracking and fish habitat models can help inform management of sharks and tunas. How do you sustainably
Predicting overlap of tunas, sharks, and ships at sea Read More »
The first-ever satellite mapping of fishing vessel behaviours has identified that very few vessels are using one of the key techniques to avoid accidentally killing albatrosses. Researchers hope a new analytics tool demonstrates that satellite data can help monitor efforts to reduce seabird mortality in fishing operations, and drive more transparency in general in the global fishing industry.
The Tale of the Albatross and the Algorithm Read More »
Manuel Dureuil is a PhD student researching sharks and Kristina Boerder a postdoctoral fellow working on marine protected areas at Dalhousie University, Canada. In a recent publication in SCIENCE, Elevated trawling inside protected areas undermines conservation outcomes in a global fishing hotspot, Manuel, Kristina and a team of researchers from Dalhousie University, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre
More fishing inside, more sharks outside marine protected areas Read More »
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.
Global Fishing Watch 2018 – the year in transparency Read More »
