April 12, 2018 — At least every 30 seconds, more than 70,000 fishing vessels responsible for most of the world’s catch broadcast automatic identification systems (AIS) signaling their identity, location, and speed.
The AIS systems were originally designed to help large vessels avoid collisions on the open ocean, but in recent years, conservation groups and fisheries enforcement have used those signals for a new purpose: spotting vessels that might be fishing illegally.
But this technique is far from watertight. Oceana, a conservation group, has documented millions of instances since 2012 of vessels going dark by turning off public trackers.
“Vessels disabling their public tracker is a common occurrence and is happening in all corners of the world — we are just now beginning to understand how widespread the practice is,” Beth Lowell, senior campaign director for illegal fishing and seafood fraud at Oceana, told SeafoodSource.
Vessels might turn off tracking for multiple reasons, many of them legitimate, such as evading pirates. But when a vessel turns off location broadcasting near marine reserves and other areas where fishing is limited or illegal, it raises questions, Lowell said.
For instance, Oceana documented a Panamanian vessel on the west side of the Galapagos Marine Reserve that seemed to disappear for 15 days before reappearing on the east side. Meanwhile, an Australian vessel’s AIS signals were shut off near Heard Island and the McDonald Islands Marine Reserve 10 times in one year, and a Spanish vessel went dark near The Gambia’s national waters repeatedly.
Read the full story at Seafood Source