The Plan to Map Illegal Fishing From Space

[MachineGhost]

Crews on big fishing boats deploy an impressive arsenal of technology—from advanced sonars to GPS navigation and mapping systems—as they chase down prey and trawl the seabed. These tools are so effective that roughly a third of the world’s fisheries are now overharvested, and more than three-quarters of the stocks that remain have hit their sustainable limits, according to the FAO. For some species, most of the catch is unreported, unregulated, or flat-out illegal.

But now environmentalists are using sophisticated technology of their own to peel away that cloak of invisibility. With satellite data from SpaceQuest and financial and engineering support from Google, two environmental activist groups have built the first global surveillance system that can track large fishing vessels anywhere in the world.

...

In the meantime, Oceana has begun using the tool internally to track vessels that have already been blacklisted for fishing illegally, Savitz said. “We can see vessels that appear to be fishing in protected marine areas. Government officials often know about this activity but don’t do anything about it. We’ll use the tool to shine light on this activity and produce public pressure for officials to actually do their jobs.”?

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/plan-map-i ... ing-space/

[dualstow]

I love it!

Do we still have to pretend that Japanese are whaling for medical research?

[Jan Van]

Nice.
Should make it easier for organisations like Greenpeace to go after these boats too I assume?