CONSERVING FISH STOCKS – The Fight Against Illicit Fishing of the Oceans is Moving into Space. Infra-red and radar are detecting illegal operations.
Economist Sept 6th 2018
ILLEGAL, unreported and unregulated. The business of off-the-books ocean fishing, abbreviated to IUU by acronym-loving international organisations, is a big one, worth many billions of dollars a year. Estimates of the annual catch landed beyond the authorities’ notice range from 11m to 26m tonnes. That is on top of an official catch of a bit under 90m tonnes a year. Given the belief of most fisheries scientists that even permitted extractions are doing great damage to marine ecosystems, this is worrying. But policing the oceans is hard, meaning that, more often than not, IUU fishermen get away with it.
This, though, is changing. New ways of watching from space may turn the tables on illicit fishing, heralding an era in which keen eyes follow every fishing boat, all the time. At the least, this will make clear who is turning a blind eye to the IUU brigade. The excuse that “we didn’t know what was going on” will become untenable.
That such an excuse is tenable at the moment reflects the deficiencies of current monitoring arrangements. These are based on a requirement for vessels at sea to have radio beacons. Large ships are supposed, by international agreement, to be fitted with what is known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), and to keep it on all the time. Arrangements for small ones vary from country to country, but most require some sort of beacon to be fitted to craft sailing in their waters.
The beacons’ main purpose is to avoid collisions. But monitoring them can also give away who is fishing nefariously, if you develop the software to sift through masses of location data looking for patterns. Beacon-watching has also helped identify hot spots for the transfer of catches at sea from IUU fishing boats to refrigerated cargo vessels, a practice which conceals the origin of a catch. Transshipment hotspots have been identified in this way off west Africa and Russia, and in the tropical Pacific. But beacons can be (and are) switched off. So concerned parties are looking to the heavens for an answer.
Global Fishing Watch—a collaboration between Oceana, a conservation group, Google, a division of Alphabet, and Sky Truth, a charity that uses remote sensing to monitor environmental problems—has turned to America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for help. NOAA has long collected satellite data on clouds. These are available to outsiders at no cost. The agency’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite consists of two sensors, each mounted on a different satellite. Between them, these sensors photograph the entire planet every 24 hours. Though their target is cloud cover, they can also see small, bright sources of light. Some of these give away the activities of fishermen. Many marine species are attracted to light, so it is common practice to shine floodlights into the water.
To find those illegals who do not so conveniently illuminate their activities Global Fishing Watch turns to satellite radar data. These are gathered mainly by private companies for sale to customers who want to do things like monitor the logging of forests. Global Fishing Watch, too, has to pay for them. Radar data have proved themselves useful, though. In 2016, for example, radar turned up a fleet of ships off the coast of Chile that had their AIS turned off.
According to Tony Long, Global Fishing Watch’s boss, the price of commercial radar data means that the organisation has to be selective about which regions it looks at using this part of the spectrum. That, however, is changing. The European Union’s Sentinel satellites now provide radar data free of charge. Global Fishing Watch is working on an automated vessel-detection system that uses these data.
Better detection would certainly help limit IUU fishing. The Port State Measures Agreement, introduced in 2016 and now ratified by 55 countries, is supposed to stop vessels engaged in such fishing from landing their catches. But ports can act against a vessel only if they know what it has been up to. The technology being developed by Global Fishing Watch makes it possible to report offenders quickly, thus giving port authorities time to act.
The future, moreover, looks brighter still—or dimmer, if you are an illicit fisherman. CubeSats, satellites the size of a loaf of bread, are lowering the cost of Earth observation. This will enable organisations like Global Fishing Watch to get the data they want at an affordable price. Mr Long believes that it will soon be feasible to track all boats continuously. If the will to enforce the rules exists, IUU fishing could thus be made a thing of the past. In many places that will does not exist. But better monitoring at least promises to make clear where commitment is lacking.