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New Vessel Insights

A screen capture from the Vessel Viewer platform provides a view of the product interface showing the new insights tab on the left half of the image and an activity map on the right half with red vessel tracks on a blue map background with a time range bar beneath.

Global Fishing Watch has released updates to Vessel Viewer and application programming interfaces, or APIs, to support fisheries managers and decision makers working towards elimination of illegal fishing. 

In addition to the ability to search and analyze a vessel’s profile, anyone can now:

Readily access five vessel identity and activity insights based on user requests and feedback. These insights show:

      • Whether a vessel is present on an regional fisheries management organization (RFMO) illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) vessel list
      • A vessel’s automatic identification system (AIS) coverage metric
      • Any AIS off event, where a vessel has likely disabled AIS transmission
      • Whether there were detected apparent fishing events in no-take marine protected areas (MPAs)
      • Whether there were detected apparent fishing events in areas where the vessel has no known RFMO authorization

More deeply examine a vessel’s identity and activity trends, compliance history and authorizations. 

      • The vessel insights are produced through regular consolidation and advanced data analysis from over 40 regional and national registries, providing automated insights about a vessel, at a time range of interest from as early as 2020 onwards. 
      • Each insight is supported with guidance information detailing the data sources, attributes, analysis criteria and data maintenance processes to ensure effective and accurate user interpretation.

Be empowered to reference key insights, to support due diligence, risk assessment and operational planning.

    • Overcoming the challenges faced around data availability, the insights support users with useful references, enabling better identification of information gaps and vessel compliance evaluation. 

Two additional insights on vessel’s flag changes and flag State presence under the Tokyo and/or Paris MOU black or grey lists were added as beta version and provided to partners to support their development and interpretation. If you would like to learn more, please contact us at: [email protected] 

While every attempt is made to ensure the insights presented are as accurate as possible, users are recommended to always validate findings in consultation with the data sources and request additional information to support decision making.

Find our user guide, supporting information and the API documentation on the Global Fishing Watch website. We would love to hear your feedback! Share how we can make the features useful to you through the built-in feedback form in the left sidebar on our map, or directly through our public Canny board.

For general Global Fishing Watch platform use support, contact: [email protected]
For APIs use support, contact: [email protected]

Release – Thursday, April 11, 2024

Go to Vessel Viewer
Go to Vessels API
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