Ask the Expert

Shen Yan Liow
Product manager, vessels and identity

How is user feedback incorporated into the development of Vessel Viewer?

At Global Fishing Watch, we recognize the importance of accessible data – as well as decision makers’ willingness and ability to utilize them effectively for sustainable ocean governance.

Vessel Viewer, our vessel history and insights tool developed in partnership with TMT, was created and iterated through engagement with a range of stakeholders. These dialogues have helped us to understand the needs of fisheries authorities, compliance managers and various private sector actors, to build a tool that helps assess a vessel’s risk of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

While strides have been made by authorities and responsible actors to strengthen oversight, gaps in regulation and monitoring are still being exploited allowing vessels fishing illegally to operate undetected. Operators engaged in illegal fishing may change a vessel’s identity –through callsigns or registered flags – quickly and frequently to evade inspections.

To provide managers a more complete picture of a vessel’s current and past identities, we automate and regularly gather data from numerous sources, such as vessel monitoring system data shared by States and over 40 public registries. We then pair each vessel’s set of identity data with transmitted automatic identification system (AIS) data. This matching process from both registries and self-reported AIS sources allows us to apply machine learning models and big data analysis to surface vessel behavioral information. We use this to produce comprehensive vessel identity and activity database for over 100,000 vessels searchable by anyone on Vessel Viewer, across a 12-year timeframe dating back to 2012.

Technical experts from fisheries authorities across four African States were part of a ports pilot program to co-design, define and refine the Vessel Viewer tool. Recognizing the relevance of the tool for wider fisheries control, risk assessment and due diligence processes, piloting was then extended to the marine insurance and seafood supply chain sectors. While critical vessel risk profiling features were largely achieved leading to the public release of Vessel Viewer in October 2023, we learned through different user groups that managers are often tackling multiple vessels at the same time. Effectively assessing each vessel’s risk would strain the limited resources that exist. Having the ability to review a fleet of vessels based on user-created vessel groups was therefore a requested feature to propel monitoring and risk assessment efforts.

This requirement is now possible on Vessel Viewer following a recent update. Building upon two powerful existing functions – vessel identity cross-matching and single vessel insight analysis – the new vessel group report features further support for fisheries and compliance managers in the simultaneous review and monitoring of up to 1,000 vessels with the same level of detail previously only available in single vessel profiles. Users can launch an automated vessel group analysis and generate reporting based on vessel identity and historical activity information. With this new function, Vessel Viewer’s analytical capabilities can help surface and aggregate fleet level insights, allowing – through the group report –easy identification of vessels by flag, gear type or activity. It also helps indicate potential risks such as flag changes and where vessels have been added to an IUU fishing list.

The vessel group analysis marks a big technological step forward, allowing authorities, fisheries managers and decision makers to optimize their resources on investigative steps that require human analysis.

At Global Fishing Watch, we are committed to serving our users by actively listening, understanding and collaborating across diverse sectors to address their needs. We are also committed to maintaining a truly open access and functional platform, and we cannot do so without users sharing their feedback — helping us identify improvements, shape new possibilities, and evolve our tools and platform.

Users can share feedback through the built-in feedback form in the left sidebar of our tool and register to join our user research community, helping us create an active feedback loop for better data and tools that promote greater accountability and bolster ocean governance.