TRACKING ROGUE VESSELS BOLSTERS FISHERIES MANAGEMENT - GLOBAL FISHING WATCH

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 19 (Bernama) -- A new study titled “Tracking Elusive and Shifting Identities of the Global Fishing Fleet” by Global Fishing Watch revealed that almost 20 per cent of high seas fishing is carried out by vessels that are either internationally unregulated or not publicly authorised, with large concentrations of these ships operating in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean and the western Indian Ocean.

The study, which was published in Science Advances, combines a decade’s worth of satellite vessel tracking data with identification information from more than 40 public registries to determine where and when vessels responsible for most of the world’s industrial fishing change their country of registration, a practice known as “reflagging” and identify hotspots of potential unauthorised fishing and foreign-owned vessels activity.

Global Fishing Watch researchers along with the Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab from Duke University and Stockholm Resilience Centre were able to track and analyse 35,000 commercial fishing and support vessels to reveal their changing identities and enable the reconstruction of vessel histories to demonstrate reflagging patterns, using big data processing and a compilation of global datasets.

“When a vessel’s identity is changed, it makes tracking them all the more difficult, allowing bad actors the opportunity to take advantage of information gaps and avoid oversight. We need to close that loophole,” said Global Fishing Watch senior data scientist and lead author of the study, Jaeyoon Park in a statement.

According to the study, fleets with prevalent reflagging are over five times more likely to be composed of vessels under foreign ownership which are often registered to “flags of convenience,” defined by the International Transport Workers' Federation as countries that offer foreign shipowners the ability to register or fly the flag of their own State.

While reflagging and foreign ownership are lawful, when not properly regulated and monitored, they can indicate a risk of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. IUU fishing accounts for as much as 20 per cent of the global seafood catch with annual losses valued at up to US$23.5 billion. (US$1 = RM4.32)

The study also identified concentrations of fishing activity by foreign-owned vessels, which are focused in parts of the high seas and certain national waters, in which the hotspots correspond to the areas where multiple non-governmental organisations have called for better governance systems.

“By synthesising over 100 billion Global Positioning System (GPS) positions with consolidated identity information from 200,000 vessels, we were able to reveal patterns about vessel activity from the past decade,” added Park.

Global Fishing Watch is an international nonprofit organisation dedicated to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea.

-- BERNAMA