March 31, 2015 — What do you get when the world’s leading marine conservation group, a digital mapping non-profit and a data-storing giant team up? Global Fishing Watch (GFW), a free online tool that will allow anyone to track movements of fishing fleets around the world.
GFW uses data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a tracking system used by over 100,000 vessels, to identify behavior consistent with fishing. It represents the next step in transparency within the seafood supply chain.
The creation of Global Fishing Watch comes at an exciting time for the world of marine conservation and seafood sustainability. On March 15, at Seafood Expo North America in Boston, Massachusetts, the Presidential Task Force on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing and Seafood Fraud unveiled its action plan. The plan lays out ambitious steps that the federal government will take to put an end to seafood fraud and illegal fishing, both domestically and internationally.
Read the full story from Oceana's International Blog