December 22, 2020 — A tracking system designed to help ships avoid crashing into each other has become an important tool for spotting bad behavior on the high seas. Researchers can now put a spotlight on corporations that dominate fishing in unregulated international waters where it’s easier to get away with overfishing. And it’s giving us a better idea of how widespread slave labor could be on fishing vessels.
Two recently published papers use this technology, the maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS), to make high-seas fishing a little less mysterious. The first study, published in the journal One Earth on December 18th, traces the origins of thousands of high-seas fishing vessels back to big-time corporations that keep store shelves stocked with seafood. Other researchers use AIS to reveal telltale markers of forced labor on fishing boats, which were published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). That all makes it easier to make companies answer for any abuses they commit at sea.
The technology, the maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS), has actually been around for about two decades. Basically, vessels carry around a box that sends out radio signals that anyone else can pick up on. Those radio signals share information about the ship, an identifying number, and other things like its size, course, and speed. That’s supposed to help vessels spot each other so they don’t get in each other’s way.