What?
American movie star Leonardo DiCaprio unveiled a free technology that allows users to spy on global fishing practices, in a bid to curb illegal activity in the oceans and rebuild imperiled fish stocks. The technology, known as Global Fishing Watch, was officially released to the public during the Our Oceans Conference hosted by US Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington. "Today, this unprecedented technology is available to everyone in the world. I encourage everyone to go check it out," DiCaprio told the conference. "This platform will empower citizens across the globe to become powerful advocates for our oceans."
Why?
Overfishing has become a major problem in many parts of the world. Commercial boats have now become so skilled at catching fish ” using sonar, GPS, and other technologies ” that some fisheries are being harvested unsustainably.
Worldwide, some 31.4 percent of assessed fish populations are now overexploited, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Some of the planet's largest fish, including tuna and swordfish, are below 10 percent of their historical level. And that's starting to have adverse effects. Countries have tried to alleviate this problem by placing limits on fishing, either by setting quotas on catches or by protecting certain areas to allow fish populations to recover. But many of these rules get undermined by fishing boats operating illegally. Between 1996 and 2016, the global wild marine catch has stagnated, as humans work harder and harder to catch fewer fish.
How?
Available at GlobaFishingWatch.org, the technology aims to offer a crowd sourced solution to the problem of illegal fishing. Using satellite technology combined with radar aboard boats, the platform allows people to zero in on areas of interest around the world and trace the paths of 35,000 commercial fishing vessels.
The project has cost $10.3 million over the past three years to build, with $6 million of those funds contributed by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in January. In order the make the data available for free, Oceana and its partners negotiated a deal with the satellite company Orbcomm to use its three-day old data, which is described as "near real-time," along with historical records. Although the delay means that any criminals won't be nabbed instantaneously, advocates say the technology will open the world's waters to public watchdogs in a way that has never been done before. The system isn't perfect yet, and the algorithms are still being improved. It sometimes mistakes other vessels for fishing boats. It can't currently track smaller boats that aren't required to use the Automatic Identification System (AIS).
• Users could zero in on a marine protected area and see if any boat tracks have crossed into waters where they should not have been.
• One could scan the map for any evidence that large vessels are fishing in areas that are reserved for small-scale fishermen.
• Vessels can be tracked by name or by country, or by traffic inside exclusive economic zones.
• The paths of ships are visible, including zigzag paths that could indicate vessels are avoiding shore to offload their catch on to other ships undetected, or that other illegal operations or human rights abuses may be under way.
• Future versions of the technology may even include tagging data for marine animals, so that the paths of whales and sharks and other fish might be visible alongside the vessel activity.
• Currently, Global Fishing Watch does not include every vessel, only those that broadcast data from the Automatic Identification System, collected by satellite and terrestrial receivers and meant mainly as a safety mechanism to avoid collisions.
• Many of the world's largest fishing vessels are required by the International Maritime Organization to use AIS.
• AIS can be turned off if the boat operator is doing something illegal, but such an on-off action would likely be apparent by tracing the boat's appearing and disappearing tracks.
• Already, the government of Kiribati has used Global Fishing Watch data to unmask illegal fishing in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, declared off-limits to commercial fishing on January 1, 2015.
