Satellite feeds and common ship tracking technology are helping researchers to pinpoint global fishing activity down to individual vessel movements and providing extensive data to aid in improved ocean management.
The study, led by Global Fishing Watch, and published in February in the journal Science, note that over 37 million hours of fishing were observed in 2016 of fishing vessels that traveled more than 600 times the distance to the moon and back.
Global Fishing Watch, a new technology platform developed by Google, SkyTruth and Oceana, has been in operation for less than a year. Its efforts are funded by a number of foundations.
The study, “Tracking the global footprint of fisheries,” was led by David Kroodsma, director of research and development at Global Fishing Watch. The team also included researchers from the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas project, University of California Santa Barbara, Dalhousie University, SkyTruth, Google and Stanford University.
“By publishing the data and analysis, we aim to increase transparency in the commercial fishing industry and improve opportunities for sustainable management,” Kroodsma said. The biggest problem is lack of transparency in the global fishing industry,” he said.
Oceana officials said they partnered with SkyTruth and Google to create an online transparency tool out of concerns that illegal fishing not only jeopardizes food security, but compromises the health of oceans.
Researchers concluded that global patterns of fishing have surprisingly low sensitivity to short-term economic and environmental variation and a strong response to cultural and political events, such as holidays and closures.
The hope is that this new transparency will help governments monitor fishing vessels in their waters and help enforcement agencies to prioritize problem areas and vessels of concern. Goals also include assisting researchers studying the impact of fishing on ocean health and helping fishery managers, conservation organizations and harvesters to identify potential unauthorized activity.
The dataset compiled by Global Fishing Watch offers greater detail than previously possible about fishing on the high seas. While most nations appear to fish predominantly with their own exclusive economic zones, China, Spain, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea account for 85 percent of observed high seas harvesting.
Researchers also determined that the total area of the ocean fished is likely higher than the 55 percent estimated, since the data do not include some fishing effort in regions of poor satellite coverage or in exclusive economic zones with a low percentage if vessels using automatic identification systems (AIS). AIS was originally designed to help prevent ship collisions by broadcasting to nearby vessels a ship’s identity, position, speed, and turning angle every few seconds. These messages are also recorded by satellite – or land-based receivers. Now that its usefulness as a tracking tool has been established, researchers are using AIS to directly map global fishing activity.
