According to Pew, illegal fishing accounts for one out of every five fish taken from the ocean.
Illegal fishing is not only an industrial issue, either. It accounts for major environmental and human threats.
Illegal fishing threatens marine ecosystems, increases food insecurity and regional economic instability, and is linked to huge human rights violations. And Global Fishing Watch knows that something must be done.
The organization uses cutting-edge technology to create the world’s first livestream map monitoring the global fishing fleet and made it public and freely available to the entire world.
What started as a collaboration between Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google in 2015 is now an international data-gathering organization that keeps our oceans safe and sustainable.
A little over a year after its launch, Global Fishing Watch became a completely independent global nonprofit with the purpose of advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea.
This is done through free and public maps visualizations as well as data and analysis tools, which help everyone - regardless of their location - see what is going on in the ocean and subsequently protect biodiversity, fisheries, and livelihoods.
Using satellite technology, cloud computing, and machine learning, Global Fishing Watch aggregates tracking data from a myriad of sources, processes it to be easily readable, and disseminates it to anyone with an internet connection.