Data Vendor Transition

Global Fishing Watch has completed its migration to Kpler as its unified automatic identification system, or AIS, data provider.

Why the vendor switch
Global Fishing Watch previously relied on Spire, ExactEarth and MarineTraffic to provide AIS data. As the maritime data industry consolidated, Kpler acquired both Spire and MarineTraffic, which had previously absorbed ExactEarth. Kpler then folded these legacy sources into a single, unified infrastructure. Migrating to this consolidated platform was the logical next step for our operations.

Impact on Global Fishing Watch products
Kpler is projected to grow its global AIS coverage annually. Global Fishing Watch coverage remains consistent, though the volume of data received is higher than before. We performed a substantial infrastructure overhaul to ensure systems could reliably handle the higher data volumes. This included building a more robust ingestion and delivery pipeline capable of processing increased data volumes without degrading performance.

This transition brings several key improvements:

• • A more robust and efficient data ingestion and delivery pipeline.
  • A single, high-quality source of AIS data that powers all of our product offerings.
  • Strong and expanding AIS coverage for our products.

Data caveats

• • The new feed does not include satellite receiver IDs, which affects how Global Fishing Watch handles data quality for satellite-sourced AIS signals.
  • There was a minor data volume disruption on April 22, 2026 when we switched from our old infrastructure to the new configuration. 
  • Coverage has improved in the U.S. and Europe, and events data was unaffected by the transition.
  • On April 22, 2026, there was a slight drop in apparent fishing effort coverage in the South China Sea. This dip appears consistent with the timing of China’s annual fishing moratorium. While Global Fishing Watch cannot confirm causation, fishing activity was likely lower during this period rather than being an artifact of coverage loss.
  • Globally, there is slightly lower coverage after April 22, 2026 with the most impacted areas around China and Southeast Asia. Our coverage metric showed a global drop of four percent.
  • The coverage metric is calculated by equal-weighting each individual grid cell regardless of fishing activity levels. As an equal-weighted global figure, the metric assigns the same weight to a low activity area as to a high activity hotspot. The practical impact in most active areas may differ from the four percent figure.

Next steps
The Kpler feed is live and powering all Global Fishing Watch tools. For questions about coverage or data quality following this transition, contact [email protected].