Photo: Oceana.org
Pirate fishing operations are undermining our best efforts to sustainably manage the earth’s fisheries. While these illegal operations use the ocean’s sheer size to evade detection by enforcement agencies, a group of data scientists, imaging technology companies, and ocean researchers are tapping satellites to crackdown on a pirate industry.
The sheer size of our oceans has made pirating a lucrative business. From human trafficking to illegal fishing, crime on the high seas is booming because it’s virtually undetectable by enforcement agencies. For example, large vessels called reefers collect fish from different fishing boats and transport the catch to market. It’s a practice called transshipping, and while it frees up boats to get back to fishing and increase yield, it also makes it difficult to track which fish came from which boat. Illicit fishing enterprises take advantage of this ambiguity by scattering illegal catch among legal catch, knowing it will get lost in the fold. It’s technically fish laundering. And once the illegal catch makes it on the boat, the pirate’s success rate is pretty high. The experts know this, so a diverse group of ocean advocates are getting innovative in the fight against illegal fishing.
In September 2016, Google teamed up with the nonprofits Skytruth and Oceana to launch Global Fishing Watch, the first free platform for tracking global commercial fishing. The illicit fishing industry is already feeling the heat. With the recent release of the report, No More Hiding at Sea, illegal transshipping is being exposed. The investigation, a joint effort based on the data provided by Global Fishing Watch, resulted in the first mapping of transshipping hotspots that likely represent locations where pirate fishing is flourishing.
Researchers constructed the map by way of a clever process. First, they identified reefers acting suspiciously. Each vessel that is following the rules has an Automatic Identification System (AIS) broadcasting its whereabouts. When AIS data suggests certain behavior, like slowing down for extended periods of time, researchers can assume transhipping is taking place. Data from the report suggests that 86,490 transhipping events occurred between 2012 and 2016. Of these, only 5,065 had AIS data properly identifying the two ships involved. The remaining 80,000 events involve vessels that have decided to go dark or turn off their AIS devices. These suspicious events give an idea of the volume and location of unregulated fishing from pirate vessels. Oceana, the primary author of the report, hopes that these findings will encourage international investigations into transhipping and increased resistance to vessels “going dark.” Most importantly, the report suggests that satellite imaging and location technology may prove to be the most effective weapons against pirate fishing yet.
