The Ocean Is Visible Now, What Happens Next Is Up to Us

Satellite monitoring is changing ocean protection.

You can turn off your transponder.

You can change your flag.

You can even move at night,

but you cannot hide from space any longer.

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Let's start off with satellite tracking.

So satellite tracking, AIS systems, and machine learning

are transforming the way we do ocean enforcement.

For the first time in history,

large-scale fishing effort can be observed globally

near and near real time.

Enforcement is no longer limited to patrol boats,

which we talked about in yesterday's episode.

So the key question here is,

can technology close the enforcement gap

in marine protection?

Let's talk about the evolution of monitoring

or even the revolution of monitoring.

Automatic identification systems, AIS,

were originally designed to avoid collision.

So large ships, move at night or move around,

and sometimes it's difficult to see where they are.

They don't wanna collide mid-trip,

and so that could be a big help to make sure

that they know where everybody is.

Large vessels are required to broadcast location,

speed, and course.

So these signals can be captured by satellites

and organizations now aggregate AIS data globally.

So global fishing watch,

which I'll put the website in the show notes

so that you can get access to what they do

because they're a great organization.

They have made much of this data globally accessible.

So for the first time,

fishing effort is visible at a planetary scale,

and visibility changes in sentives.

Just a quick story about AIS,

I did a project for the government of Canada,

for DFO, Department of Fish Resortions,

on the East Coast of Canada, when I was a contractor.

And the biggest thing that they wanted to do

is find out where vessels go

along the East Coast of Canada.

And we used AIS data that we got from the Coast Guard,

the Canadian Coast Guard.

And we were able to use and make tracks

and look at heat maps of where the most popular areas

and shipping lanes were for these ships.

It was great data, but it was always behind a wall.

It was very difficult,

even for the Department of Fish Resortions

to get access to this data

because they wanted to make sure

that not everybody had access to it.

You got to worry about safety and everything like that.

Global fishing watch is making it accessible publicly

so that you have access to this AIS data.

Now, I don't know how old the AIS data is.

I'm sure it's fairly recent,

but this is going to help conservationists

and fisheries managers enjoy making maps

of these shipping lanes and even for fisheries

to make sure they know where everybody is

at all times in terms of fishing.

Now, there is also a study that came out

that 75% of fishing vessels do not have their AIS turned on,

which is a problem and that needs to be solved.

But satellite imagery can come in and help out.

So research using tracking has shown

that industrial fishing activity covers more than 55%

of the ocean surface.

That's half of the ocean surface, right?

And the ocean covers 71% of the planet.

Think about how often these ships are around

and how much it actually covers.

Fishing effort concentrates around productive regions

and MPA boundaries.

YMPA boundaries, we've talked about this in the past

over the past couple of weeks,

it's because they're productive

because they allow for the biomass and numbers of animals,

a fish to and all different types of seafood

to be able to spill over those boundaries.

So they're always around those boundaries.

Now, some vessels deliberately turn off their AIS

near protected areas.

So patterns of dark activity can be detected

using radar satellite.

So that means you don't have to have a satellite

just looks at the visual spectrum.

Radar satellite looks at a spectrum

that you cannot normally detect

when you are looking out at the night.

So you're able to see ships at night where they are

and how they do.

That's why we say they cannot hide anymore.

So synthetic aperture radar, which is SAR,

which is what the radar is,

can detect vessels even if the AIS is turned off.

So whether they're at night or the GPS is turned off,

they can actually detect them where they are

and what they're doing.

Noncompliance leaves digital fingerprints.

This is an important fact.

You know, we need to make sure that we can account

for these fishing vessels,

especially if they're near productive or protected areas

because that's where the fish are.

And that's where a lot of the illegal activity is happening.

And that's where a lot of the illegal activity is happening.

Now let's talk about illegal unreported

and unregulated fishing, IUU fishing.

So IU fishing costs the global economy

and estimated 10 to 23 billion US dollars annually.

That's a huge amount.

It disproportionately affects developing coastal nations

and weak enforcement regions are especially vulnerable.

So areas of like say countries

that cannot afford to do enforcement,

that do not have the funding

and we talked about yesterday to do enforcement,

that's where illegal fishing happens.

That's where the IUU fishing actually happens.

So the high seas fleets often operate

far from national oversight.

So satellite monitoring increases detection probably.

They can go anywhere.

Doesn't matter if they're out of the reach

of a lot of the patrol boats.

It doesn't matter if they're in areas that are fully remote.

These are areas that can be accessible

through satellite imagery.

Now with satellite imagery,

SARS can look through clouds, which is great.

Other satellite imagery that's not SAR,

like that's not radar,

is something that you have to be concerned about

because you'll get like, you know, clouds.

So on a cloudy day, you know,

these fishers might get a little smart.

I don't know.

But, you know, you have to be careful with that.

But with this radar detection, it actually helps.

All right, the detection probably increases the deterrence.

Right, the fact that that fishers know

that they can be detected by satellite,

that actually probably helps with deterrence.

So deterrence will change the way people behave

around MPAs, around productive sites.

Now global fishing watch as an example,

it shows like technology in action.

So, you know, it provides open access maps

of global fishing effort, which always helps.

This data is used by journalists, scientists,

and governments, and it helps identify

suspicious activity inside MPAs,

especially when you have boats that are, you know,

skirting around the boundaries.

These boundaries are not visible when you're out at sea.

You know, from a GPS,

and they probably had the boundaries on their navigation maps,

but you don't really see it on the ocean.

So they can always say that they didn't know

they were inside or out.

But now with satellite, you can tell if they're inside.

Now, in the fact that satellite imagery

can come in faster than ever, you know,

there's some satellites that went back in the day,

back in the day, in the early 2000s,

when I was using satellite,

you had to wait like a day or you had to wait a couple days.

So it's very difficult for detection of illegal fishing.

But once you actually are able to get it

almost near real time, that actually helps.

So it increases transparency for distant water fleets, right?

This is, that's what it really, it really does.

In some regions, governments now use satellite alerts

to trigger patrol deployment.

So if someone's near a marine protected area, boom.

It stands a trigger.

That trigger goes to the patrol unit.

The patrol unit goes out to make sure

that they can get there in time

in case there's any illegal activity.

So enforcement is actually becoming data driven,

which for scientists, that is where it's at.

Now, studies show that fishing effort

often clusters just outside of MPA boundaries,

like I mentioned, fishing the line is a common practice.

So fishing that boundary line.

Some incursions occur inside weekly enforced MPAs,

and then the satellite helps document these violations.

In well-enforced MPAs, visible vessel traffic

inside boundaries is actually minimal,

because we know one satellites is monitoring these areas

and the patrol boats can go out.

So technology strengthens the accountability

within MPAs.

Now of course, there's always gaps when we talk about

any kind of data-driven technology.

So the technology is not a silver bullet.

So smaller vessels often do not carry AIS.

So it's difficult to tell if there's a smaller vessel

in there.

Some vessels spoofed location data.

They're getting smart, and we have to be smarter.

And enforcement still requires legal authority

and prosecution.

So once you get enforcement, you can catch the people,

but you have to bring them back and protect them to court.

And of course, sometimes, I know in Canada,

a lot of times the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

So a lot of times they'll get off with a lot more,

maybe a small fine.

And that might be worth getting a small fine

as if the payment is worth it.

However, if you're continually found guilty in court,

then maybe that will affect what you're

going to do later on, because the punishment's

going to get stronger and stronger and stronger.

So many countries lack capacity to respond to satellite alerts.

So that's a problem.

You can detect as much as you want,

but if you can't catch them, that's a difficulty.

So technology creates visibility,

but visibility must translate into action.

We still need that enforcement like we talked about yesterday.

Now satellite monitoring shifts the balance

of power back to the government, let's say,

or the monitoring agencies.

It reduces plausible deniability.

It exposes inconsistencies between policy and practice.

It allows NGOs and civil society

to hold governments accountable.

Ocean governments is becoming transparent,

but transparency only matters if consequences follow,

just like I mentioned before.

Now, if you enjoy this type of evidence-based ocean reporting

that goes beyond the headlines, follow this show,

and hit that follow button, and don't miss tomorrow's episode.

Now let's just frame it up here in the final part.

Technology has changed the equation.

We've gotten better.

For decades, the ocean was too vast to monitor.

It was hard to be everywhere at once.

Now it is visible.

Illegal fishing leaves a digital trace.

Boundary violations can be mapped.

Effort can be quantified.

The era of invisible exploitation is actually ending.

But here is the critical point.

Data does not enforce itself.

Satellites can detect violations.

Governments must still act.

And technology, it's just a tool.

Enforcement is the actual decision,

and protection still depends on that political will.

So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode,

on satellite detection.

Have you been working with satellite imagery before?

What is your experience?

What have you done if you were especially in the fisheries area?

If you were just listening to this for the first time,

love to hear your thoughts, do you think this will work?

If we'd like to hear more examples,

we can talk about more examples.

Let me know how you feel by going to speakupforblue.com,

forward slash feedback.

That's speakupforblue.com, forward slash feedback.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

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I want to thank you so much for joining me

on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

I'm your host, Angela, and have a great day.

We'll talk to you next time

and happy conservation.

And happy conservation.

And happy conservation.

And happy conservation.

And happy conservation.

And happy conservation.

And happy conservation.