< Platform updates

2025 March – Vessel Viewer and Vessels API – New vessel identity fields from TMT

A screenshot of Vessel Viewer showing a vessel profile on the left half of the screen with new identity fields highlighted by orange boxes. A portion of a world map with vessel tracks can be seen on the right side, showing from central Europe east to New Zealand.
New vessel identity information provided by TMT is now available in vessel profiles in Vessel Viewer, including vessel gear type, year built, length, depth, gross tonnage and photo, when available

Global Fishing Watch and TMT are pleased to introduce new vessel identity information and registry sources, supporting fisheries, compliance managers and stakeholders with more complete information when evaluating vessel identities, both past and current. 

Anyone can now:

  • Access additional vessel identity information on Vessel Viewer including vessel gear type, length, depth, built year, gross tonnage and vessel photo (and copyright), when available. These additions are accessible in the Vessels API through the ‘extraFields’ object within the ‘registryInfo’ structure.
  • Review the vessel identity data sources from TMT by hovering over ‘Registry sources’ under the ‘Registry’ tab on vessel profiles.

This is part of an ongoing effort to integrate data from TMT’s Fisheries Analytical Capacity Tool (FACT) database into the Global Fishing Watch platform and data pipeline, demonstrating both organizations’ commitment to continue to expand vessel identity and history data available to stakeholders thereby driving transparency, strengthening fisheries management and ocean governance. 

Over 15,000 fishing vessels accessible on Vessel Viewer now have additional identity values available through TMT data integration. Moving forward, TMT data updates will be automated and fed into our monthly vessel identity data releases available directly on Vessel Viewer and our public Vessels API.

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 platform more useful or consider any additional data sources through the built-in feedback form in the left sidebar on our map or the add platform requests to our public Canny board.

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

Release – Thursday 13 March

Go to Vessel Viewer
Go to Vessel API
Scroll to Top