June 21, 2024 — Nonprofit organizations Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and SkyTruth have reported that vessels on the world’s oceans may be using constantly improving technology to falsify and scramble their automatic identification system (AIS) coordinates, potentially carrying out illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing through the use of such technology.
One of the first instances that alerted the organizations to this fact was a Russian-flagged tanker vessel that was found to be broadcasting false AIS coordinates on at least two separate occasions.