Global Fishing Watch
D4. Fisheries, aquaculture, blue economy and marine resourcesDefinition
Platform providing transparency of fishing activity using AIS data.
Global Fishing Watch is an open platform that maps commercial fishing activity by processing satellite AIS broadcasts and applying machine-learning to classify vessel behavior, making apparent fishing effort visible to anyone. Launched in 2016 by Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google, it has exposed transshipment patterns, fishing inside MPAs, and gaps where vessels disable AIS. It complements regulator-only VMS by adding public transparency to the monitoring, control, and surveillance toolkit.