Illegal fishing

Humans are racing to harness the ocean’s vast potential to power global economic growth. Worldwide, ocean-based industries such as fishing, shipping and energy production generate at least US$1.5 trillion in economic activity each year and support 31 million jobs. This value has been increasing exponentially over the past 50 years and is expected to double by 2030. Transparency in monitoring this “blue acceleration” is crucial to prevent environmental degradation, overexploitation of fisheries and marine resources, and lawless behavior such as illegal fishing and human trafficking. Open information also will make countries better able to manage vital ocean resources effectively. But the sheer size of the ocean has made tracking industrial activities at a broad scale impractical – until now. A newly published study in the journal Nature combines satellite images, vessel GPS data and artificial intelligence to reveal human industrial activities across the...

In January 2019, the Korean-flagged fishing vessel Oyang 77 sailed south toward international waters off Argentina. The vessel had a known history of nefarious activities, including underreporting its catch and illegally dumping low-value fish to make room in its hold for more lucrative catch. At 2 a.m. on Jan. 10, the Oyang 77 turned off its location transponder at the edge of Argentina’s exclusive economic zone – a political boundary that divides Argentina’s national waters from international waters, or the high seas. At 9 p.m. on Jan. 11, the Oyang 77 turned its transponder back on and reappeared on the high seas. For the 19 hours when the ship was dark, no information was available about where it had gone or what it did. In a study published in Nov. 2022, I worked with colleagues at Global Fishing Watch, a nonprofit that works to advance ocean governance by increasing transparency of human activity at sea, to show that these periods of missing transponder...