ocean governance

Where Tourism and Tuna Overlap: How Global Fishing Watch is Informing Policy Discussions

Octavio Aburto of Scripps Institution of Oceanography (left) and his colleagues, Juan Mayorga of UC Santa Barbara and Enric Sala of Pristine Seas are using Global Fishing Watch to understand the economic impacts of establishing a new Marine Protected Area in Mexican waters. [UPDATE: On October 5, 2017, the Mexican government announced its intent to expand the Revillagigedo marine park into

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Flag of Convenience or Cloak of Malfeasance?

Fisheries / By Kimbra Cutlip

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

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A New View of Marine Protected Areas

Research and analysis / By Kimbra Cutlip

In 2016, 33 countries agreed to establish a global network of scientifically supported Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that will increase the amount of ocean area protected from the current 2 percent to 10 percent by the year 2020. MPAs either restrict human activity such as fishing, or they prohibit it all together. But the question

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Seafood Giants Commit to Stamping Out IUU Seafood

Impacts / By Kimbra Cutlip

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

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A New Angle on Baltic Sea Cod = Upheaval for the Fishery

News & Views / By Kimbra Cutlip

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,

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Taming the Ocean’s Wild West

Fisheries / By Kimbra Cutlip

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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Whaling off the map

News & Views / By Douglas McCauley and Francis Joyce

Are whaling vessels that operate without using aids to avoid vessel collision putting the safety of biodiversity and people at risk? This week the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has convened in Slovenia. The gathering marks the 30th anniversary of the commission’s moratorium on commercial whaling.

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Witness to a Crime?

Policy & Compliance / By Kimbra Cutlip

Unusual fleet behavior off West Africa spurs our analyst to investigate Just because something appears suspicious, doesn’t mean laws are being broken. Jumping too quickly to conclusions could embroil a legally operating fishing fleet in unwarranted investigations or accusations. Equally damaging would be to rush in on a crime without solid evidence and lose the

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An Interview with Jackie Savitz, Oceana’s Vice President for U.S. Oceans

News & Views / By Kimbra Cutlip

Oceana’s Vice President for the United States and Global Fishing Watch, Jackie Savitz, has spent her career on the front lines of the fight to protect and save the world’s oceans. After earning her master’s degree in environmental science from the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland, Jackie moved into the advocacy and

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What Ports Can Tell Us

Article / By Kimbra Cutlip

Ports provide an important source of information to help us combat Illegal fishing and understand the science and economics of global fisheries. “They serve as the interface between land and sea for fishing vessels,” says Wessley Merten, our data and fisheries analyst at Oceana. “Wherever there’s a port, there’s an interaction. Whether it be offloading catch,

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Interview with Michael Hirshfield: Chief Scientist and Strategy Officer, Oceana

News & Views / By Kimbra Cutlip

Dr. Michael Hirshfield oversees Oceana’s new offices in the Philippines, Canada and Brazil, and ensures that Oceana’s policy advocacy is solidly based on the latest scientific information. Throughout his long career, Dr. Hirshfield has worked on issues related to fisheries and aquatic ecosystems from a variety of viewpoints.

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Interview with Chris Costello: Environmental Economist

News & Views / By Kimbra Cutlip

A 2016 recipient of the prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award, Dr. Christopher Costello is a professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, UC Santa Barbara. His work focuses on natural resource management, and in particular, the issues surrounding resources that cannot be claimed by an individual or

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Going Dark: When Vessels Turn Off AIS Broadcasts

Data and technology / By Kimbra Cutlip

Something we hear often about tracking vessels with Automatic Identification Signals (AIS) is that transponders can be turned off. Fishers that don’t want to be caught doing something illegal or questionable will simply “go dark.”

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Interview with Marine Ecologist Dr. Doug McCauley

News & Views / By Kimbra Cutlip

Last year, Dr. Doug McCauley told the New York Times that humanity may be on the verge of creating a mass extinction in the seas unless we can rapidly change our course. McCauley and his colleagues had just published a paper in Science magazine on the health of the oceans that drew a lot of

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Beyond the Horizon

Fisheries / By Global Fishing Watch

Most of the oceans are over the horizon and under the waves. As a result, the ocean is incredibly difficult to monitor. With regards to fishing, most of our data on where and when fishing occurs comes from data collected at port or through the logs of

Beyond the Horizon Read More »

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Where Tourism and Tuna Overlap: How Global Fishing Watch is Informing Policy Discussions

Flag of Convenience or Cloak of Malfeasance?

A New View of Marine Protected Areas

Seafood Giants Commit to Stamping Out IUU Seafood

A New Angle on Baltic Sea Cod = Upheaval for the Fishery

Taming the Ocean’s Wild West

Whaling off the map

Witness to a Crime?

An Interview with Jackie Savitz, Oceana’s Vice President for U.S. Oceans

What Ports Can Tell Us

Interview with Michael Hirshfield: Chief Scientist and Strategy Officer, Oceana

Interview with Chris Costello: Environmental Economist

Going Dark: When Vessels Turn Off AIS Broadcasts

Interview with Marine Ecologist Dr. Doug McCauley

Beyond the Horizon

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Reporting

What we do

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Reporting

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