Platform Updates

Global Fishing Watch has released updates to the map and marine manager portal: 

• Global environmental data – Through close collaboration with Google Earth Engine, we’re bringing in daily resolution environmental data – including sea surface temperature, salinity and chlorophyll-a concentration – with the touch of a button.
  • What’s more you can filter the environmental data heatmap to only show certain areas where environment data meets the range you’ve set. This can be really powerful if species of interest only exist in specific temperature or salinity ranges.
• Vessel group analysis – Stakeholders can understand where groups of vessels are active over space and time with the ability to create custom groups and filter activity layers by groups
  • For technical reasons, this will be initially restricted to viewing 3 months activity on screen at a time.
• More options for data downloads – Global Fishing Watch has added new functionality to download a list of active vessels from AIS apparent fishing effort in any reference layer, whether exclusive economic zones (EEZs), marine protected areas (MPAs) or reference layers that you upload directly. This can be useful where you don’t need to download spatial data and would just like to see which vessels were active.
• Location names – Adding in location names to the map from Google Maps so anyone can understand activity related to coastal locations and at higher zoom levels.
• Ability to switch mode of filtering between include and exclude – Stakeholders can switch filters between ‘include’ and ‘exclude’ options to support faster analysis e.g. View the activity of all vessels in the EEZ of a certain country except vessels flagged to that country to see where foreign flagged vessels may be active.
• Sorting layers in the map – Anyone can sort the reference layers, environment layers and uploaded layers in any workspace
• Change color and centre view on activity – Change colors of any activity layer in the map and marine manager portal. Previously, stakeholders could only centre activity on a track to focus in workspaces. Now, you will also be able to centre the map based on activity layers. This is particularly useful if you have filtered activity by groups and are only viewing a small amount of activity.

Global Fishing Watch has released updates to the map and marine manager portal timebar: 

• Speed through time – Global Fishing Watch has added new buttons to quickly change your time range between years, months, days and hours more easily. When switching, two behaviors have been added:
  • If your time range includes the latest available data, like the last few months of activity, the map will keep the most recent data in the new time range for you.
  • If your time range does not include the latest available data, like a previous year’s data, the update will snap to the middle of the previous range.
• Improved map and timebar sync – Activity on the Global Fishing Watch map now accurately reflects the exact time range you’ve selected on the timebar. Analysis features and data downloads have always matched the exact time range, but previously, due to technical constraints, the map may have visualized activity a few hours or days outside of your time range. The timebar also now accurately shows when datasets begin and end, like the exact date a transparency country partner began sharing vessel monitoring system (VMS) activity.
• Smart activity data aggregation – For time ranges under three months, more specific daily data is shown. Above this, activity data is aggregated by month. Similarly, for time ranges under 6 years, monthly data is shown. Otherwise, activity data is aggregated by year. 

Find supporting information and tutorials on the Global Fishing Watch website. Share feedback through the built-in feedback form in the left sidebar on the marine manager portal and map. Email [email protected] for support.

Release –  Thursday 15 December