FCS News

Dalhousie University researchers have played an important part in bringing to life a 'revolutionary' new website that allows anyone with internet to monitor and track commercial fishing activity around the world, as well as potentially identify illegal fishing.

Unveiled last week, Global Fishing Watch is a joint project between Google, digital mapping non-profit SkyTruth and ocean conservation group Oceana. It's funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

The website allows users to view a world map with more than 35,000 major fishing vessels moving in "near real time," which is 72 hours from the present time.

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Fishing out illegal activity 

Dal biologists worked with computer scientists at the university, including Canada Research Chair Stan Matwin.

Matwin said he and team member Erico N. de Souza figured out how to feed satellite data on fishing activity into newly developed machine-learning algorithms.

Machine learning is a subfield of computer science that pools existing data to make predictions.

A halibut quota owned by the Newfoundland and Labrador Industrial Development Corporation is being fished by a Nova Scotia company and processed outside the province. (CBC)

He said those algorithms can determine which of three types of fishing a ship is involved in (trawling, long-lining or purse seining), whether a ship is fishing or not, and if a ship is moving in an abnormal way or not.  

Using that information, it would be possible to distinguish illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activity.

Read the full story from Katy Parsons over at CBC News.