https://www.skytruth.org/2018/11/new-milestones-for-fisheries-transparency-in-indonesia-and-peru/?fbclid=IwAR0oj7H5ULSViCkzkUp-MSMErvVZrx5wfOwNoR9ZeDT_Br9s9M8HhrfStyc

New Milestones for Fisheries Transparency in Indonesia and Peru

November 7, 2018/in Fishing, Oceans /by Bjorn Bergman

Global Fishing Watch and SkyTruth team members at the Our Oceans conference in Bali, Indonesia.

Until recently public tracking of fishing activity has been almost entirely dependent on AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, an open system for vessel tracking and collision avoidance. It’s exciting to see this changing with the success of Global Fishing Watch’s Transparency Program. This program began when Indonesia’s fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti took the unprecedented step of sharing the country’s Vessel Monitoring System(VMS) tracking data publicly on Global Fishing Watch. VMS had traditionally been a closed monitoring system accessed only by government authorities. Public VMS made thousands of smaller Indonesian fishing vessels trackable in an region with little AIS coverage and established a new policy of total transparency to reinforce Minister Susi’s overhaul of a fisheries sector previously plagued by illegal fishing and labor abuses.

The Our Oceans conference last week in Bali, Indonesia was a chance to showcase the great work of our Indonesian team, recently including analysis of VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) nighttime satellite imagery for detecting possible illegal activity in Indonesian waters and developing a process for validation of fishing effort predicted from VMS tracks along with Indonesian researchers. It’s also exciting to see that Indonesia has started a trend in choosing transparency in fisheries monitoring. Peruvian VMS tracking data now appears on the Global Fishing Watch map dramatically increasing our coverage of fishing in the eastern Pacific.

Wildan Ghiffary and Imam Prakoso of the SkyTruth Global Fishing Watch team at the Our Oceans Conference.

Here in Lima it has been great to see the Peru program take shape beginning with the commitment last year to publicly share VMS with Global Fishing Watch. Since then we have held workshops and training sessionswith Peru’s Marine Research Institute and vessel monitoring authorities. I also recently had a chance to attend Peru’s biannual marine sciences conference (CONCIMAR) where along with Oceana Peru we put on a workshop for Peruvian students and announced the release of Peruvian data on the Global Fishing Watch map.

Peruvian students attending a workshop on Global Fishing Watch organized by Oceana Peru at Peru’s biannual marine sciences conference (CONCIMAR) held at Universidad Nacional José Faustino Sánchez Carrión in Huacho, Peru.

Both here in Peru and in Indonesia we are excited to see the beginning of a new era of transparency in monitoring and managing fishing resources. New tools and data sources developed by Global Fishing Watch and SkyTruth are being made available to local students, researchers, and government regulators. We are particularly pleased to see so much local interest from the countries that have chosen to share their tracking data publicly. And this is just the beginning. Global Fishing Watch has big plans for supporting fisheries transparency in the future as we aim to work with 20 countries in making their fishing fleets publicly trackable in the next five years.

Discussion of the Global Fishing Watch platform with fisheries science students in Peru.