We’re hooked on this map of industrial fishing
We’re hooked on this map of industrial fishing
15 Nov 2014 8:31 AM
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We’re hooked on this map of industrial fishing
We’ve written before how the best tools to fight overfishing at sea may be found in the skies – but this past Wednesday, proof-of-concept came in the form of a satellite-tracked map of all the journeys made by 25,000 large fishing vessels between 2012 and 2013.
The system is called Global Fishing Watch, and it was conceived by ocean-hugger nonprofit Oceana, developed by our favorite eye-in-the-sky watchdog SkyTruth, powered by satellite company SpaceQuest, with technical support from Google. Those are some heavy hitters to throw their weight behind the problem of illegal fishing — and they could actually make a difference. Here’s Wired‘s take:
Although the system currently displays voyages from nearly a year ago, “the plan is that we will build out a public release version that will have near-real-time data,” said Jackie Savitz, Oceana’s VP for U.S. oceans. “Then you’ll actually be able to see someone out there fishing within hours to days,” fast enough to act on the information if the fishing is happening illegally, such as in a marine protected area.
Here are the nuts and bolts: Large boats at sea are required to declare their positions by an automatic identification system, whose signals can be picked up by satellite. By feeding all these IDs and movements through some (read: a lot of very complicated) analysis, the Fishing Watch system can identify fishing boats. And, by omission, those boats who do not claim to be fishing but nevertheless behave as though they are.
So now we’re one step closer to catching fish criminals red-herring-handed.
Source:
The Plan to Map Illegal Fishing From Space
, Wired.
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