Using gaps in location data to track illegal fishing

Speaking of non-location in the seas, researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz, NOAA Fisheries, and Global Fishing Watch are trying to use the absence of data to identify boats fishing illegally. Harry Stevens for The Washington Post has the maps showing when fishermen turned off their transponders to hide location.

There’s plenty of (missing) data, but the tricky part is figuring out if the shutoffs are during illegal activities or are just fishermen keeping their spots private from competitors and pirates. [Thanks, Michael]

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China’s fishing patterns shift globally

China’s fish supply is running low along its own coast, so they’ve shifted their fishing activities globally. The New York Times visualized the shift with animated maps.

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Who catches the most fish

Using data from Global Fishing Watch, Hayley Warren and Ian Wishart for Bloomberg mapped the predominant country for fishing in European Union and British waters. There’s disagreement between the U.K. and the EU about who gets to fish where.

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Tracking global fishing through satellite data

Global Fishing Watch

Global Fishing Watch is an initiative to place some accountability on global fishing, an activity typically a challenge to track.

This version of the Global Fishing Watch started with 3.7 billion data points, more than a terabyte of data from two years of satellite collection, covering the movements of 111,374 vessels during 2012 and 2013. We ran a behavioral classification model that we developed across this data set to identify when and where fishing behavior occurred. The prototype visualization contains 300 million AIS data points covering over 25,000 unique vessels. For the initial fishing activity map, the data is limited to 35 million detections from 3,125 vessels that we were able to independently verify were fishing vessels. Global Fishing Watch then displays fishing effort in terms of the number of hours each vessel spent engaged in fishing behavior, and puts it all on a map that anyone with a web browser will be able to explore.

The map below is an example of the fishing patterns over time.

Sky Truth

A good start. I hope they can make estimates of legal and illegal activity in the next iteration.

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Fishermen on St. Pierre Island launch their dory before dawn to…



Fishermen on St. Pierre Island launch their dory before dawn to fish for cod, September 1967.
Photograph by W. E. Garrett, National Geographic

Fishermen on St. Pierre Island launch their dory before dawn to…



Fishermen on St. Pierre Island launch their dory before dawn to fish for cod, September 1967.
Photograph by W. E. Garrett, National Geographic

Four-foot long cod are slung across the backs of cod fishermen,…



Four-foot long cod are slung across the backs of cod fishermen, February 1915.
Photograph by A. B. Wiltse, National Geographic

Fishermen load their catch of sardines into crates on the…



Fishermen load their catch of sardines into crates on the Adriatic Sea, May 1970.
Photograph by James P. Blair, National Geographic