There comes a time when the useful life of an oil platform comes to an end, at least when it comes to drilling for oil, and that’s when we dive in. Blue Latitudes, founded by Emily Hazelwood and myself, is a women-owned environmental consulting firm on a mission to re-purpose offshore oil and gas platforms […]
Oil rigs alive: marine life abounds in unlikely places Read More »
Darcy Bradley is a postdoctoral researcher at University of California – Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. Her recent publication in Conservation Letters, Leveraging satellite technology to create true shark sanctuaries, examined how advancements in tracking technology can help us better understand illegal fishing activity and therefore improve fisheries management. What do you
How can vessel tracking technology help to create true shark sanctuaries? Read More »
Can you actually make a problem worse by promising to solve it? That’s a conundrum that policymakers face — often unwittingly — on a variety of issues. A famous, if controversial, example comes from the gun control debate in the United States, where calls for tougher legislation in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook
“The blue paradox” published in PNAS Read More »
This week marks the publication of the first-ever global assessment of transshipment in a scientific journal. Researchers at Global Fishing Watch and SkyTruth, in the journal Frontiers of Marine Science, published “Identifying Global Patterns of Transshipment Behavior.” What is transshipment? Why does it matter? What have we learned and what remains unknown? Read on to
Using bright lights to reveal the ‘dark’ fleet Christopher Elvidge with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Earth Observation Group writes about matching night-time imagery with monitoring data from fishing vessels to shed new light on the ‘dark’ fleet. The challenges with tracking vessels Vessel tracks from Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Vessel
Identification of ‘dark vessels’ Read More »
As the countdown continues to September’s historic first round of United Nations treaty talks on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in the high seas, science and technology are shedding increasingly compelling light on what is currently happening in this previously poorly understood realm. The latest in a series of reports focused on
Satellite tracking shows the economics of much high seas fishing does not add up Read More »
Researchers explore an alternative pathway to fast-tracking the global recovery of fisheries By Julie Cohen Short-term pain for long-term gain. When applied to the reform of global fisheries, this strategy could yield enormous benefits. If only it were that easy. For many countries — especially those in the developing tropics where fishery reform is needed
Fighting Illegal Fishing Read More »
In the 23 February 2018 issue of Science, along with research partners at University of California Santa Barbara, National Geographic Pristine Seas, SkyTruth, Dalhousie University, Stanford University, and Google, we published a global analysis of fishing effort using AIS data. We have made our data on the vessel identity and fishing effort freely available. This post provide links to
Tracking the Global Footprint of Fisheries Read More »
Our research paper, “Tracking the global footprint of fisheries,” was published today in Science. A key finding of the study is that fishing is remarkably non-seasonal at a global scale. What matters far more than any natural annual cycle, it turns out, are cultural and political factors: fishers in North America and Europe don’t work
The Dynamics of the Global Fishing Fleet – Interactive Read More »
Today is an exciting day for the Global Fishing Watch Research program. Working with six partner institutions, we have published the first ever global analysis of fishing effort using Automated Identification System (AIS) data. Our paper, “Tracking the global footprint of fisheries,” is in the February 23rd edition of Science. Along with the publication of this
Our Dataset — Now Available Read More »
Wei Zhou, ocean campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia’s Beijing office, used Global Fishing Watch to understand the impact of recent changes to fisheries policy in China on the extent of fishing in the Chinese EEZ. On September 16, 2017 at noon, over 10,000 fishing vessels based in Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces in China headed out to start
Understanding the Impacts of the Chinese Fishery Moratorium Read More »
Sam Weber worked previously for the Ascension Island Government and is currently at the University of Exeter helping to establish the largest Marine Protected Area in the Atlantic around Ascension Island.
Understanding Fishing Activity Around Ascension Island Read More »
Chris Kerry, a researcher at the University of Exeter in the UK, is using Global Fishing Watch gridded data to understand if seamounts are targeted by fishing vessels and if fishing activity is linked to any specific seamount characteristic. Seamounts, or undersea mountains that rise from the ocean floor, create an environment rich with biodiversity. Yet little is
The Missing Data to Help Protect Seamounts Read More »
Christopher Ewell was an undergraduate student at New York University when he authored a publication on transshipment with Global Fishing Watch’s report, The Global View of Transshipment: Preliminary Findings, as an important source. Is banning transshipment necessary to diminish illegal fishing? It is according to a recent publication in Marine Policy, titled Potential ecological and social
Is banning transshipment necessary to diminish illegal fishing? Read More »
Jason Rossman, sales and marketing representative for East Bay Seafood Company, looks forward to the day when clients open his daily price list and trace the exact position of the vessels that just caught his fish. “We haven’t gone live with this yet,” he says, “but internally we’re ramping up the best way to embed the
East Bay Seafood Company Pursues Traceability Read More »
