The maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a radio communications system by which vessels continuously broadcast their identity and position over public airwaves using unencrypted VHS radio signals. When it was developed almost 20 years ago, its primary purpose was to increase safety at sea: ships needed a better way to “see” each other and
5 years, over 86,000 potential transshipments In early 2017, we released an original report based on analysis of our data that revealed remarkable new insights about what goes on between fishing vessels at sea. The machine learning platform we developed found that over the past five years, there were more than 86,000 potential cases in which fishing
86,490 Points on a Map: All Potential Transshipments Read More »
Today we published our initial research on transshipment at sea. Transshipment at sea is where a fishing vessel offloads its catch to a refrigerated cargo vessel (or “reefer”) far from port. You can download a copy of our report via this link. The image above was created by our data scientist Nate Miller, who has spent
It’s been just over five months since Global Fishing Watch launched publicly, and this week, we hope to make another splash by not just mapping global fishing activity, but by providing an unprecedented view of very specific activity by a very specific class of vessels around the world. Today, at the Economist World Ocean Summit
Transshipment: A Global Footprint Never Seen Before Read More »
In the U.S., you can’t slap a license plate on your car from a state you don’t live in. Not so for ships on the ocean. Of course, ships don’t have license plates; they have flags, but it’s not uncommon for a fishing vessel to fly a flag from a country that has no actual
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 22, 2017 Contacts: Kimbra Cutlip, [email protected] +1.443.871.1632 David Kroodsma, [email protected], +1.415.656.7540 Mara Harris, [email protected] Hidden No More: The First-Ever Global View of Transshipment in the Commercial Fishing Industry Transshipment, the transfer of goods from one boat to another, is a major pathway for illegally caught and unreported fish to enter the global
The First-Ever Global View of Transshipment in Commercial Fishing Read More »
Over the past couple of months, SkyTruth analyst Bjorn Bergman has been watching some interesting activity by the Chinese fishing fleet in the Pacific. A large Chinese flagged squid-fishing fleet had been fishing at the boundary of Peru’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) throughout the summer and fall of 2016. Then, near the middle of December,
New research published in the journal Biological Conservation sheds light on the contentious debate surrounding large Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that restrict or prohibit fishing and other activities. By combining established shark tracking methods with the publicly available Global Fishing Watch platform that allows anyone to track fishing activity anywhere in the world, scientists have demonstrated that
Tracking fishing vessels and sharks reveals protection for large mobile animals Read More »
There were a whole lot of fishing vessels inside the Motu Maha no-take marine reserve last year, and every one of them had a reason to be there. As part of our series on deciphering suspicious behavior, we asked Dave Stevens, Senior Analyst for the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries, to help us understand
What’s Happening inside Motu Maha Marine Reserve? Read More »
If it’s true that change starts at the top, then efforts to clean up the global fishing industry may be in for a boost. In a joint statement issued last week, CEOs from the world’s eight largest seafood companies committed to leading the fight against IUU fishing and slavery on the oceans while contributing to sustainability
Seafood Giants Commit to Stamping Out IUU Seafood Read More »
The first step in catching illegal and unreported fishing activity can feel a little like casting a net over a wide swath of the ocean. There’s going to be a lot of bycatch, because much of what fits in your net isn’t really what you’re after. It takes some background knowledge and often a little
Deciphering Suspicious Behavior: Not Always What It Seems Read More »
‘Tis the season, and even fishers want to be home for the holidays. The flag state filter in Global Fishing Watch allows us to select vessels flagged to a specific country or countries. In the spirit of the season, we decided to use it to see if a cultural tradition that has nothing to do with fishing
When two ships meet to transfer goods, it is called transshipment. In the fisheries industry, it is sometimes legal in ports, but usually illegal out at sea where the practice can’t be monitored. [You can read more about it here]. Transshipment can facilitate the mixing of illegal or unreported catch with legal catch, making it
Last month, the EU Fisheries Council of Ministers slashed next year’s catch quota for the Western Baltic Sea cod by 56 percent. It was a bold move that has fishermen concerned for their livelihoods and scientists concerned for the sustainability of the stock. Though unprecedented,
A New Angle on Baltic Sea Cod = Upheaval for the Fishery Read More »
The high seas are often called the ocean’s Wild West—open territory far from any shoreline or national jurisdiction where the global fishing fleet takes a free-for-all approach to harvesting the world’s shared resources. There’s some truth to that, but there are, in fact, laws intended to manage fishing on the high seas. They’re hard to
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