A new program called the Global Fishing Watch lets anyone track the world’s 35,000 largest fishing vessels using a free online map, says Vox. The program, which relies on Google software, was created by Oceana and the nonprofit SkyTruth in the hopes of curbing overfishing and illegal harvests. Even though the map has a 72-hour lag time, journalists and other watchdogs can still identify a boat in waters it shouldn’t be in — a marine reserve, for instance, or “no take” zone — and alert regulators.
“As Oceana explained in a 2014 report laying out the project, all large vessels on the ocean are required to use an Automatic Identification System (AIS) that broadcasts the ship’s identity, location, and so forth. The project’s creators developed an algorithm that analyzed these boats’ movements and could figure out which boats were fishing boats,” reports Vox.
AIS can sometimes misreport a ship’s location, either because of an equipment error or because the crew tampered with the equipment. Also, AIS doesn’t yet track smaller vessels, though Oceana is trying to convince the International Maritime Organization to require the system onboard smaller ships.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 31.4 percent of fish populations are overharvested, according to Vox.