Saving Seafood

Indonesia makes its fishing fleet visible to the world through Global Fishing Watch

June 8, 2017 — This week, at the United Nation’s Ocean Conference, the Republic of Indonesia becomes the first nation ever to publish Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data revealing the location and activity of its commercial fishing fleet. The new data being made public on the Global Fishing Watch public mapping platform reveals commercial fishing in Indonesian waters and areas of the Indian Ocean where it had previously been invisible to the public and other nations.

Susi Pudjiastuti, the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Affairs for the Republic of Indonesia, is taking a bold step toward increasing in her country’s . Today she urges other nations to do the same.

“Illegal fishing is an international problem, and countering it requires cross border cooperation between countries,” says Minister Susi. “I urge all nations to join me in sharing their vessel monitoring data with Global Fishing Watch. Together, we can begin a new era in transparency to end illegal and unreported fishing.”

Also at the UN Ocean’s Conference, Global Fishing Watch has committed to host any country’s VMS data, calling on other governments to follow Indonesia’s lead. “We believe publicly shared VMS will become a powerful new standard for transparent operation in commercial fishing,” says Paul Woods, Global Fishing Watch CEO and Chief Technology Officer for SkyTruth, a founding partner of Global Fishing Watch along with Oceana and Google. “SkyTruth has been collaborating with the Indonesian government for the past two years to really understand their VMS data and find new ways for VMS to enhance their fisheries management.”

Working closely with Oceana toward a united goal of transparency at sea, Peru becomes the first nation to follow Indonesia’s lead. Vice Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Hector Soldi, announced Peru’s intent to publicly share their VMS data in Global Fishing Watch.

“We applaud the commitments made by Peru and Indonesia to publish their previously private vessel tracking data and encourage other countries to follow their lead,” said Jacqueline Savitz, Senior Vice President for the United States and Global Fishing Watch at Oceana. “Together, with forward-thinking governments like these, we can bring even greater transparency to the oceans. By publishing fishing data and using Global Fishing Watch, governments and citizens can unite to help combat illegal fishing worldwide. With more eyes on the ocean, there are fewer places for illegal fishers to hide.”

Read the full story at Phys.org

Hidden no more: First-ever global view of transshipment in commercial fishing industry

February 22, 2017 — Transshipment, the transfer of goods from one boat to another, is a major pathway for illegally caught and unreported fish to enter the global seafood market. It has also been associated with drug smuggling and slave labor. Illegal in many cases, transshipment has been largely invisible and nearly impossible to manage, because it often occurs far from shore and out of sight. Until now.

Today, with the release of our report, The Global View of Transshipment: Preliminary Findings, we present the first-ever global footprint of transshipment in the fishing industry. The report explains how data scientists from SkyTruth and Global Fishing Watch (a partnership of Oceana, SkyTruth and Google) analyzed Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from ships at sea to developed a tool to identify and track 90 percent of the world’s large refrigerated cargo vessels, ships that collect catch from multiple fishing boats at sea and carry it to port.

According to the analysis, from 2012 through 2016, refrigerated cargo vessels, known as “reefers,” participated in more than 5,000 likely transshipments (instances in which they rendezvoused with an AIS-broadcasting fishing vessel and drifted long enough to receive a catch). In addition, the data revealed more than 86,000 potential transshipments in which reefers exhibited transshipment-like behavior, but there were no corresponding AIS signals from . Brian Sullivan, Google’s lead for Global Fishing Watch, will present the findings at the Economist World Ocean Summit in Indonesia today. The report, along with the underlying data and our list of likely and suspected transshipments, will be freely available on our website, globalfishingwatch.org.

The global scale of transshipment and its ability to facilitate suspicious activity, such as illegal fishing and human rights abuses, is exposed in a complementary report being issued today by our partners at Oceana. The opportunity for mixing legal and illegal catch during the collection of from multiple fishing boats provides an easy route for illegal players to get their product to market. This obscures the seafood supply chain from hook to port and hobbles efforts at sustainability because it prevents an accurate measurement of the amount of marine life being taken from the sea.

Read the full story at Phys.org

Help fight illegal fishing with Global Fishing Watch

January 31, 2017 — Hundreds of millions of people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods, and almost 3 billion rely on it as a protein source. But countless threats — overfishing, destructive fishing practices, bycatch, dishonest catch reporting, habitat destruction — threaten our oceans and the people who depend on them. It’s an economic problem, too:  illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a universal problem that accounts for 11-26 million tons of fish caught and $10-23 billion in global economic losses each year.

It seems overwhelming. But what if there was a tool that gave all people the power to become watchdogs of our oceans? How can technology help enforcement agencies to better monitor their territory at sea? How can we help identify illegal fishing and protect ocean habitats?

These are all questions that Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google contemplated as part of their joint effort to create a new tool called Global Fishing Watch – just named one of the Top 10 Ocean Conservation Victories of 2016. Global Fishing Watch is an online platform that allows anyone with an internet connection to monitor when and where commercial fishing is happening around the globe. This new technology is the result of a powerful collaboration that takes advantage of the strengths unique to each partnering organization: Oceana’s ability to execute winning advocacy campaigns to protect the world’s oceans, SkyTruth’s ability to use satellites to monitor threats to the planet and Google’s ability to organize and make large and complex data sets universally accessible.

Read the full story at Discover Magazine

Satellite, cellular technology starting to catch up to IUU scofflaws

November 10, 2016 — Technological advancements in satellite and cellular technology are being brought to bear in the international fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, enabling greater levels of surveillance and policing in the vast – and previously mostly lawless – open ocean.

An article in Business Insider details the story of how the tiny island nation of Kiribati successfully used satellite imaging provided by Global Fishing Watch, a partnership between Google, Oceana and SkyTruth, to catch a commercial fishing vessel fishing illegally in a no-catch zone. Central Pacific Fishing Company, the owner of the vessel, Marshalls 203, was fined USD 2 million (EUR 1.8 million) as a result of the investigation.

Another group that is pushing the envelope when it comes to using tracking technology onboard fishing vessels is Pelagic Data Systems. The company, based in San Francisco, California, has developed a cellular vessel tracking system specifically designed for small-scale fisheries and small-boats, which compose as much as 95 percent of the world’s fishing fleet.

The smaller, solar-powered units that Pelagic Data Systems has designed are much cheaper than an AIS system, and have been successfully implemented on a variety of vessel sizes and types. The units record a geolocation every few seconds, stores it on the vessel after compressing and encrypting it, and uploads data when it comes into contact with a cellular network, according to PDS chief scientific officer Melissa Garren, who presented as part of the SeafoodSource webinar “Small vessels, big data: Silicon Valley takes up the fight against IUU fishing” on Thursday, 20 October.

“The challenge is to put all vessels on the map using a combination of all different sorts of technology,” Garren said. “Whatever it takes to improve fisheries management, the livelihood of fishermen, and the environmental sustainability of our marine resources.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Satellite watchers busted an illegal fishing vessel, and they’re coming for others around the world

November 2, 2016 — The island nation of Kiribati suspected that Marshalls 203 had violated its recently created no-fishing zone, but it didn’t have sufficient proof. That’s where Global Fishing Watch came in.

The non-profit, created by sea conservation group Oceana, environmental satellite imaging non-profit SkyTruth, and Google, identifies fishing boats by analyzing Automatic Identification Signals (AIS). It analyzes the movement of vessels to predict when they are fishing.

In the case of Marshalls 203, it provided unmistakable imagery that showed the boat fishing in the protected zone.

“When we provided this picture and they showed it to the vessel captain, he realized he was busted,” said Jackie Savitz, Oceana’s Vice President of Global Fishing Watch.

Kirbati used this imagery to force the shipping company to pay $2 million last year.

Global Fishing Watch, which features a online tool that anyone can use for free, has some blind spots. Among them, some ships, notably smaller ones, are not required to broadcast AIS data. Also, ships engaged in illegal activity might turn it off.

Sometimes blips in AIS transmission can be used to identify suspicious activity. Savitz pointed out one ship that had dropped off the map while passing through the Galapagos exclusive economic zone — a clear red flag.

Read the full story at Business Insider 

New satellite-based technology aims to crack down on illegal fishing

September 28, 2016 — Commercial fishing in Alaska is a multibillion dollar industry. But every year, billions of dollars are lost to illegal fishing around the world. A new satellite-based surveillance system makes it easier to track illegal fishing. But some fishermen aren’t ready for Big Brother watching their every move.

Worldwide, overfishing is a huge problem. Jacqueline Savitz, vice president of the conservation group Oceana, says populations of big fish, like halibut, have dropped 90 percent. But the fish can rebound when their habitats are protected.

“We actually see fish stocks coming back and getting to levels where they’re sustainable, so we can continue to live off the interest, if you will, and not fish down the principal,” said Savitz. “But we also have a problem with illegal fishing. It’s about a $23 billion industry globally.”

Now, there’s a new tool for people who want to prevent illegal fishing: Global Fishing Watch. It’s a free, web-based, interactive map of the world’s traceable commercial fishing activity, dating back to January 2012.

It’s based off information gathered from vessels’ Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). The boats broadcast  signals including their location, who they are, and where they’re headed.

Read the full story at KTOO

Dalhousie scientists play big role in Leonardo DiCaprio-funded website

September 20, 2016 — Dalhousie University researchers have played an important part in bringing to life a ‘revolutionary’ new website that allows anyone with internet to monitor and track commercial fishing activity around the world, as well as potentially identify illegal fishing.

Unveiled last week, Global Fishing Watch is a joint project between Google, digital mapping non-profit SkyTruth and ocean conservation group Oceana. It’s funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

The website allows users to view a world map with more than 35,000 major fishing vessels moving in “near real time,” which is 72 hours from the present time.

Engineers behind Global Fishing Watch collaborated with researchers at Dalhousie University in the process of developing new ways to identify and hone in on fishing vessel activity, said Jacqueline Savitz, vice-president for U.S. and Global Fishing Watch at Oceana.

Global Fishing Watch will also eventually incorporate algorithms developed at Dalhousie, to provide a more complete picture of fishing activity on the high seas.

Read the full story at CBC News

New partnerships increase use of satellite data to curb IUU fishing

September 19th, 2016 — Two announcements this week by technology firms working with the seafood industry will increase the industry’s use of and reliance on satellite data to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Global Fishing Watch (GFW), a partnership between Oceana, SkyTruth and Google providing near real-time satellite tracking, has teamed up with Trace Register, a technology firm that provides traceability solutions to the seafood industry, to offer access to GFW’s data to all Trace Register customers.

“We are excited to announce that we’re extending our food traceability solution and will now link Global Fishing Watch data directly to the seafood that was produced. Harvesters will be able to use GFW data to provide assurances they operate in a legal and responsible manner,” Trace Register CEO Phil Werdal said. “Seafood processors, distributors, retailers, foodservice providers, and ultimately the consumer, can verify their seafood was legally and responsibly produced.”

Jacqueline Savitz, vice president for Global Fishing Watch at Oceana, said the new partnership will also assist consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions.

“Together, Trace Register and Global Fishing Watch will increase transparency in the seafood supply chain, connecting the dots from the point of catch to the point of sale,” she said.

Carrie Brownstein, global seafood quality standards coordinator at Whole Foods Market, called the increasing use of satellite technology in the seafood industry a “revolution.”

Read full story from Seafood Source

Activists Open an Online Window onto the Global Fishing Fleet

September 16, 2016 — Since 2014 a small group of environmentalists has been using satellites to track fishing vessels across the world’s oceans, alerting authorities when boats appear to violate protected marine areas. Now these watchdogs are opening their system to the public with an online mapping tool called Global Fishing Watch—and they are inviting anyone who can to put eyes on rogue fishers. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a longtime environmental activist, was set to formally unveil the tool on Thursday at a conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the U.S. State Department.

The project emerged from the Economist World Ocean Summit in 2014, when Paul Woods, chief technology officer of the tech-environmentalist group SkyTruth, met with Jacqueline Savitz, vice president for U.S. Oceans at the nonprofit organization Oceana, and Brian Sullivan, program manager of Google Earth Outreach. All three had been thinking about how to expose the global fishing fleet to public oversight, and in a conversation they sketched out a system to do just that. Within nine months they unveiled a working prototype. Two and a half years and 200 beta testers later, the system is being opened to everyone as a free service.

The hope, according to Savitz, is that governments and activists will use Global Fishing Watch to help improve the enforcement of fishing regulations—by seafood suppliers and customers to verify that fish are being caught sustainably; by fishing companies to demonstrate that they are complying with the rules; and by fisheries scientists to improve their estimates of fishing intensity and the effectiveness of fishery management programs.

The public monitoring system collects ship positions using digital Automatic Identification System (AIS) radio signals sent by large ships—not just fishing vessels but also cargo ships, cruise ships and others—primarily as a collision-avoidance measure. Those signals get picked up by spacecraft and terrestrial antennas operated by the satellite company Orbcomm and others, and accumulate in a database.

SkyTruth teamed up with engineers at Google to develop an algorithm that uses the speed, headings and other aspects of a ship’s motion to identify whether it is fishing or not. Vessels thought to be fishing are then cross-referenced to registries that can reveal their size, ownership and country of origin. As of last week, Woods says, the database includes 63,698 unique fishing vessels spending a total of about 14.5 million days at sea since 2012. On any given day Global Fishing Watch is tracking 10,000 to 20,000 fishing boats. Now nine terabytes and growing, the database tracks the movements of such ships from January 2012 onward. “We are adding about 22 million AIS messages per day,” Woods says. (Ship positions are delayed by 72 hours so as not to compete with Orbcomm’s sale of real-time data.)

Read the full story at Scientific American

How Google is helping to crack down on illegal fishing — from space

September 16, 2016 — Illegal and unreported fishing is a multibillion-dollar business around the globe, and one that has proven notoriously difficult to combat. In part, that’s because it involves a constant stream of renegade fishermen being pursued by countries that have only limited resources to carry out a perpetual cat-and-mouse game on the high seas.

But a new satellite-based surveillance system powered by Google, which will be publicly unveiled Thursday at a global oceans conference at the State Department, aims to help alter that equation. Global Fishing Watch, as it is called, is designed to act as an eye in the sky, constantly scouring the globe in search of those illegally plundering the oceans. The organizations that partnered to develop it, which include the marine-advocacy group Oceana and West Virginia-based nonprofit SkyTruth, say the free platform will help governments, journalists and everyday citizens monitor roughly 35,000 commercial fishing vessels nearly in real time.

“We will be able to see a lot of information about who is fishing where,” said Jacqueline Savitz, vice president for U.S. oceans at Oceana, adding that the platform will help “revolutionize the way the world views commercial fishing.”

The technology uses public broadcast data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which uses satellite and land-based receivers to track the movement of ships over time. Not all fishing vessels willingly broadcast their location, of course — particularly those intent on breaking the law — and vessels can switch off their trackers, potentially hindering the usefulness of the new technology. The United States and other countries already require vessels of a certain size to use the locator system, partly as a safety measure to avoid collisions at sea, and more countries are beginning to follow suit. Global Fishing Watch allows users to access that information to track specific vessels over time, going back to 2012.

Savitz said she believes the tool will have an array of uses. Governments could use it to monitor and enforce fishing restrictions in their waters. Journalists and the public can use it to search for suspicious fishing activity, such as vessel that suddenly seems to disappear or one that rarely comes to port, and to make sure officials are safeguarding marine protected areas. Insurance companies can track the vessels they insure.

“We’re hoping it will be useful to a lot of different sectors,” Savitz said.

Read the full story at the Washington Post