Saving Seafood

ThayerMahan reports successful anti-IUU fishing demonstration with NOAA Fisheries

April 3, 2026 — Maritime technology and surveillance company ThayerMahan reported a positive demonstration of its counter illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing solution with NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, validating its technologies for future use.

“This demonstration is important for our maritime national security, and the preservation of U.S. marine resources,” ThayerMahan Vice President Offshore Programs Greg Sabra said in a release. “We’ve proven to NOAA, the Coast Guard, and their partners that ThayerMahan’s advanced sensing and data flows give them a dependable, scalable, and repeatable way to observe protected waters and areas of interest, around the clock, with no crewed vessels or aircraft in the loop. This is how the United States can combat illicit actors at operational scale.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

A New Generation of Autonomous Vessels Is Looking to Catch Illegal Fishers

November 20, 2020 — The first time engineers from Open Ocean Robotics pushed Scooby, a three-meter robotic boat, onto a lake near their office in Victoria, British Columbia, the small craft drove straight into the bushes. Clearly, the team had more work to do on the vessel’s autopilot.

Since that early mission last year, the start-up has won innovation awards, secured seed funding, and “spent tons of time on the water” ironing out the kinks in their autonomous vessels, says Julie Angus, the company’s CEO and cofounder. The 12-person team is now up against Connecticut-based tech company ThayerMahan and Marine Advanced Robotics from Silicon Valley in a cutting-edge design challenge to build a robot that can police illegal fishing in marine protected areas (MPAs). Scooby‘s successor (named after another character) completed the first stage in the multiyear project: a three-day field demonstration using surveillance technology to track boats, detect fishing activity, and collect evidence.

To protect marine wildlife and ecosystems and sustain fisheries, the United Nations, governments, and NGOs are pushing for more and bigger MPAs. But without a clear means of enforcing the regulations that govern them, these areas often draw criticism for being little more than paper parks. In partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), these three robotics companies are racing to prove that uncrewed vessels are up to the task.

Originally, the trial was planned for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off Santa Barbara, California, but pandemic restrictions meant the participants tested their prototypes separately from around North America and presented the results to the judges remotely. Justin Manley, founder of Just Innovation, the Massachusetts-based marine robotics consultancy coordinating the project, says the upside of the disparate testing is that it let them see how effectively the robots detected different types of fishing boats.

Read the full story at Smithsonian Magazine