In Chile in September at the Fourth International MPA Congress, there was a side event on satellite-based surveillance of illegal fisheries. It was unique in that there were several Chilean naval officers in uniform in the audience. And the first speaker offered what was perhaps the most memorable line of the conference: Are we at a point where we may finally put the P’ in MPA?
The event was hosted by OceanMind, a UK-based organization working to increase the sustainability of fisheries worldwide through insights into vessel compliance. (OceanMind is part of the Satellite Applications Catapult, a UK government initiative to develop new applications for satellite technology.) By drawing from a multitude of data sources, OceanMind helps governments determine where fishing is occurring in their waters, and advises major fish buyers on which catches were legal and which ones likely were not. Chilean naval officers were at the side event because OceanMind worked with them to analyze compliance in Chile’s MPAs.
MPA News reported on OceanMind last year when it was called Project Eyes on the Seas. That article discussed the state of the art at the time in satellite-based efforts to address illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, including in MPAs. Since then, OceanMind and the other main player in global fisheries awareness Global Fishing Watch have each applied their tools and expertise with more governments.
Although Global Fishing Watch and OceanMind both use high-tech tools to track global fisheries compliance, there are distinctions between the two. Here is a brief primer, including how each has progressed in the past year:
Global Fishing Watch
Primarily AIS-sourced data: GFW started as an initiative to put a global map of fishing vessel activity on the web in near real time. A partnership of Google, SkyWatch, and Oceana, GFW did this by collecting data from vessels’ on-board Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), which identify each vessel and its position. A limitation of this approach is that vessels are able to turn off their AISs or hack them to show a different location, and any operator intent on fishing in a closed area would be incentivized to do that. GFW addresses this by noting when and where AISs have been turned off or obviously mis-located, and flagging those vessels for further analysis. GFW has begun experimenting with other data sources, including data from Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS).
A crowdsourced approach: By putting fishing vessel locations on the web in near real time, the fundamental concept of GFW is to crowdsource the observation of fishing vessel compliance. However, GFW is now also partnering directly with governments, including Indonesia and Kiribati, to apply its systems and the governments’ data to fisheries enforcement in their national waters, including inside MPAs.
OceanMind
Cumulative approach to data: OceanMind sources data from an array of sources vessels’ AIS and VMS, multiple satellite types (synthetic aperture radar, optical imaging, thermal imaging, visible infrared imaging), radio frequency detection, underwater acoustic sampling, and others. OceanMind then links these data to vessel registries and histories to identify which vessels were fishing where. Although each data source has its unique limitations (like the AIS limitations described above), OceanMind’s strategy is to balance those limitations with the strengths of other sources.
Hands-on approach: Rather than crowdsourcing fisheries awareness, OceanMind has a team of analysts who work directly with governments and the private sector, advising them on how to apply multiple data sources to analyze fishing activity and the supply chain. Currently OceanMind is partnering on compliance projects with the governments of Chile, Costa Rica, Thailand, and the UK, as well as the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission and the Seafood Task Force, an industry group of the world’s largest fish retailers and processors.