Our Analysis

Global Fishing Watch is working across the globe to provide governments and authorities with actionable reports and capacity building to help strengthen fisheries monitoring and compliance. Our global team of experts produce analyses to inform monitoring, control and surveillance of fisheries in five key areas:

  • Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing
  • Transshipment
  • Port controls
  • Marine protected areas
  • Operation support

Collaboration and information sharing are integral to achieving well-managed fisheries. By working with stakeholders and making analyses available to national, regional and intergovernmental partners, Global Fishing Watch is enabling fisheries agencies to make more informed and cost-efficient decisions.

Reports

“Global Fishing Watch provides a vital overlapping layer of intel, giving greater transparency on legitimate vessels and potential violators involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Whether you’re a large or small national state, to have access to near real-time data on fishing activity in or outside your waters is a very powerful tool. It sheds light on the problem, so that countries with restricted enforcement ability can focus their efforts efficiently on illegal fishing.”
Captain Adam B. Morrison
Captain Adam B. Morrison
U.S. Coast Guard

The Search for Squid

The waters off South America are home to some of the most lucrative fisheries in the world—one of the most well known is that of jumbo or Humboldt squid. Each year, distant water fleets journey thousands of miles in search of this large, migratory creature that resides in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Sustainable management of squid fisheries depends on a culture of transparency. By improving access to vessel information, we can create a more accurate picture of fishing effort to support research and bolster monitoring and control efforts. Global Fishing Watch seeks to make this information publicly available so that every scientist, enforcement agency and policymaker around the world has a powerful tool to help safeguard the ocean.

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Squid fleet monitoring

Global Fishing Watch is monitoring squid fleet activity in Latin American waters. In 2020, Global Fishing Watch mapped the squid fleet’s 2020 annual route and identified nearly 400 industrial foreign squid vessels engaged in fishing activities off Peru’s exclusive economic zone. Going forward, Global Fishing Watch will continue monitoring the squid fleet activity and provide authorities with actionable reports on the fleet’s movement and activity.

North Pacific Guard

Global Fishing Watch provides information to the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) during patrols in the North Pacific and west Atlantic ocean. Global Fishing Watch uses risk-based methods to help identify possible suspicious transshipments and potential IUU activity, as well as support investigations of individual vessel tracks that appear to be manipulated to report false information. The collaboration was built on the successful, inaugural support we provided to the USCG Cutter MELLON in 2019, which saw an eightfold increase in identified violations compared to 2018.

TMT

Global Fishing Watch partners with TMT, a nonprofit organization that specializes in information gathering and analysis of organized illegal fishing and associated fisheries crimes. In May 2020, upon request by the Somali government, Global Fishing Watch collaborated with TMT to provide a comprehensive report on the IUU Iranian gillnet fleet in the northwest Indian Ocean. The Iranian gillnet fleet is one of the largest IUU fleets operating outside domestic waters, made up of more than 200 unauthorized vessels operating on the high seas and in the waters of Yemen, Somalia and Oman.

Recent Work

Ask the Expert: Tim Hochberg, Senior machine learning engineer

January 3, 2024

Ask the Expert Tim Hochberg Senior machine learning engineer How do you match automatic identification system data with satellite imagery to identify publicly tracked vessels? Automatic identification systems, commonly referred to as AIS, transmit a

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