Google, SkyTruth And Oceana Target Illegal Fishing With New Technology

(RTTNews) - SkyTruth, Oceana and Google (GOOG) announced Global Fishing Watch, a big data technology platform that leverages satellite data to create the first global view of commercial fishing. A prototype was unveiled at the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia, with a public release version in development, SkyTruth said.

Global Fishing Watch will ultimately give citizens a simple, online platform to visualize, track and share information about fishing activity worldwide.

The platform works by analyzing data points from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) network. AIS, basically a GPS broadcast of a ship's location, was primarily designed as a safety mechanism to avoid collisions at sea, but information about the vessel's behavior can be derived by analyzing the identity, speed and direction of broadcasting vessels.

Global Fishing Watch removes all the cargo ships and other non-fishing vessel activity, providing an unprecedented view of human interaction with the ocean.