Maxar Spotlight: Disrupting Illegal Fishing in the Pacific

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is one of the greatest economic, social and environmental threats to the world's oceans.¹ The Southeast Pacific, a region especially dependent on fishing for economic security, has become one of the most unsustainably fished areas in the world, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has found.² As demand for fish expands, IUU fishing threatens food security, ocean ecosystems and economic growth around the world³ and undermines port and maritime security.⁴

Identifying and tracking vessels is critical to monitor the extent of IUU fishing and enforce exclusive economic zone boundaries. Many fishing vessels and reefers (large refrigerated cargo vessels) possess Automatic Identification System (AIS) transceivers for navigation and safety purposes. Each AIS signal provides valuable data on the vessel's location and movement. Most IUU fishing relies on transshipments, which is the practice of combining IUU loads with legally caught fish by transferring the illegal catch to reefers outside of territorial waters.⁵

For this edition of Maxar Spotlight, we examined the implications of IUU fishing, ideal fishing grounds and potential transshipment hot spots. Our experts used Maxar's InsightExplorer and Crow's Nest Maritime Monitoring and Security (MMS) solution to track vessels transmitting via AIS, to gain fish-catch insight, to detect vessels not transmitting via AIS and to identify vessels of interest using Maxar's high-resolution satellite imagery.

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