AI, satellites expose 75% of fish industry ‘Ghost Fleets’ plundering oceans

The ocean plays a crucial role in trade. Over one billion people rely on the as their main food source, and 260 million are employed in global marine fisheries. About 80% of all traded goods are shipped over the waters, and nearly 30% of the world's oil is produced offshore. Mapping human activity at sea faces challenges due to limited vessel tracking systems, proprietary data, and vessels not required to use tracking devices.

In response to this challenge, a new study presents a detailed global map of major industrial activities at sea using satellite imagery from 2017 to 2021. It found some shady details of what goes on beyond the . Their research showed many fishing activities which were not known to the public before.

Their technology was used to find areas where there might be illegal activities, like overfishing or fishing in places where it's not allowed. This information is available for free and can be accessed by any country, said the researchers in their study. There is illegal activity in the ocean Between 2017 and 2021, an average of 63,300 vessel occurrences were detected globally at any given moment, with roughly half being fishing vessels (42–49%).

Notably, 72–76% of globally mapped industrial fishing did not appear in public monitoring systems, highlighting substantial underreporting. So, the researchers harnessed the capabilities of machine learning and satellite imagery to formulate a global map of large vessel activities and offshore infrastructure, providing insights into the extent of human use of the ocean.

The analysis covered over 15% of the ocean, focusing on areas with more than 75% of industrial activity. It has unveiled a substantial volume of maritime activity concealed from public monitoring systems, referred to as "dark" zones. Mapping the 'blue economy' The information collected can also be used to measure how much greenhouse gasses is being released into the atmosphere from ships and offshore activities.

Understanding the extent of these emissions can be valuable in shaping policies aimed at reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions. "This picture of human activity also presents a snapshot of how industrial use of the ocean is changing. Although COVID 19 may have had a dominant role in depressing fishing activity, fishing still decreased far more than other ocean industries," noted the study.

Vessel activity was widespread but highly concentrated, with half of all activity occurring in less than 3% of the studied areas. Asia dominated vessel activity (67%), followed by Europe (12%) and North America (7%). "Publicly available data wrongly suggests that Asia and Europe have similar amounts of fishing within their borders, but our mapping reveals that Asia dominates—for every 10 fishing vessels we found on the water, seven were in Asia while only one was in Europe," said Jennifer Raynor, co author and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, in a .

The expanding blue economy, valued at 1.5–2.5 trillion dollars, encompasses offshore renewable energy, aquaculture, and mining. However, this growth is contributing to environmental degradation, with a third of fish stocks operating beyond sustainable levels and 30–50% of critical marine habitats lost due to human industrialization, said the researchers in the , which was published in the journal .

The world's population increasingly relies on the ocean for food, energy production and global trade yet human activities at sea are not well quantified . We combine satellite imagery, vessel GPS data and deep learning models to map industrial vessel activities and offshore energy infrastructure across the world's coastal waters from 2017 to 2021.

We find that 72–76% of the world's industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with much of that fishing taking place around South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. We also find that 21–30% of transport and energy vessel activity is missing from public tracking systems. Globally, fishing decreased by 12 ± 1% at the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020 and had not recovered to pre pandemic levels by 2021.

By contrast, transport and energy vessel activities were relatively unaffected during the same period. Offshore wind is growing rapidly, with most wind turbines confined to small areas of the ocean but surpassing the number of oil structures in 2021. Our map of ocean industrialization reveals changes in some of the most extensive and economically important human activities at sea.

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