By BlueShift | 2026-06-29

Global Fishing Watch is expanding its interactive map of vessel-based human activity at sea to track fishing activity across every class of vessel, including small boats that previously sailed under the radar.

By combining specialized satellite imagery and artificial intelligence (AI) to map small vessels for the first time, the project -- a collaboration with Australia's Minderoo Foundation -- seeks to shine a light on small-scale fishing activity.

The expanded map will include millions of vessels that are not represented in existing datasets due to their size, to create the first comprehensive global map of fishing effort by vessel size, per the US-based international nonprofit.

By combining vessel tracking data with advanced satellite technologies, including radar and high-resolution optical imagery, the project will show where, when and how fishing occurs in much greater detail.

It will bring together fragmented and incomplete information into a consistent, near real-time resource, according to the two organizations.

'Seeing' smallest vessels

Announced June 19 at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya, the initiative is focused on closing the ocean's biggest visibility gap: the millions of small-scale fishing boats that do not use standard satellite transponders.

"Too much of today’s fishing remains invisible to those tasked with managing our ocean," Global Fishing Watch CEO Tony Long said in a statement.

"Delayed and inconsistent data leave critical gaps in our collective understanding of fishing activity at sea. This is especially true when considering the smaller-scale fleets that support millions of livelihoods around the world."

Expected to go live within two years, the project is an expansion of Global Fishing Watch's existing map, which launched in September 2016, and operates under the auspices of Global Fishing Watch's larger Open Ocean Project.

The Open Ocean Project seeks to track all industrial human activity at sea.

The new collaboration has the potential to strengthen fisheries governance, combat overfishing, improve transparency and help secure the long-term health and resilience of the world’s oceans.

"No one has attempted to map global fishing effort at this scale before," Minderoo Foundation cofounder Andrew Forrest said in a statement.

"But if we are serious about protecting marine ecosystems and ensuring sustainable fisheries for future generations, we must first understand the true extent of what is happening at sea."

For the first time at a global scale, the project also will bring into view the world’s "dark fleet" -- vessels that do not transmit their location and are more likely to engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

By exposing this previously hidden activity, it will enable governments and authorities to identify where illegal fishing is occurring and formulate responses.

"By shining a light on these invisible fleets, we will create the clearest picture ever assembled of human activity at sea," Forrest said.

Mapping 'invisible fleets'

Mapping these "invisible fleets" involves a mix of high-resolution satellite imagery, radar reflections, and behavioral AI.

Through a data agreement with US-Earth imaging company Planet Labs, the project is able to capture high-resolution imagery across two million square kilometers of dense coastal waters each day.

This enables the detection of vessels as small as five meters in length, which would otherwise appear completely dark to global transponder networks.

As many fishing boats operate at night, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which bounces microwave pulses from satellites directly off the ocean surface, is being used to "see" vessels through cloud cover and darkness.

AI algorithms meanwhile filter the radar returns to catch subtle geometric reflections caused by fiberglass, tightly packed wood, or small clusters of vessels anchored together.

By stringing sequential satellite snapshots together, AI deep-learning models analyze the drift speed and clustering behavior of small boats to determine if they are actively deploying lines or merely transiting to shore.

They also cross-reference sightings with existing maps so that stationary obstacles are not mistaken for moving vessels.

Through its previous research and analysis of data to illuminate vessel activity and offshore development, Global Fishing Watch has provided a snapshot of how industrial use of the ocean is evolving.

"Historically, vessel activity has been poorly documented, limiting our understanding of how the ocean -- the world’s largest public resource -- is being used," said research lead and senior machine learning engineer Fernando Paolo.

"By combining satellite technology and AI models, we now have eyes on the sea in a way we’ve never had before."