So this is something I work with directly, but for some other agency.
First off, a big reason as to why - is because the laws differ from country to country. Some countries, like Norway for example, require shipping vessels over a certain length to broadcast their positions through AIS, VMS.
This may not be the case for, say, UK.
There are arguments to be had from both systems as to WHY you wouldn't want to broadcast your positions at all times - a typical one is that other could easily infer your fishing fields (fishing patterns are trivial, if you've worked with this you can easily spot what tools they are fishing with, and likely what species they are going for - don't need ML-based systems for that. Any fisher or fisheries analyst can spot the patterns), and thus go after that.
The other is privacy.
A very typical thing is that ships turn off their AIS as soon as they enter international waters. There is no enforcement of that, and many developed countries have practically zero resources to fight illegal fishing, from a technological point of view. UNDP has a program which is aimed at helping developing countries with the tech and training to detect illegal fishing, but there's a long way to go. Developing countries desperately need the data, which is either owned by governments, or private actors. AIS data is either picked up by satellites, or base stations. VMS systems are expensive, but also allow for ships to transfer catch reports and similar - but is unfortunately not always enforced in a good way.
But tech is becoming better. Satellites with NAV/marine radar detectors are in orbit. Long-range drones with sensors are a thing. Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to have certain sensors on them. Lots of ML-assisted tools for automating detection and analysis is being introduced and used.
>> Satellites with NAV/marine radar detectors are in orbit.
Ya, they are called spy sats. For the better part of a century, very smart people have been funded by people with very deep pockets to track ships at sea that don't want to be tracked. If anyone thinks their startup sat company is going to start tracking ships with passive radar, they are entering a very very mature field.
>> The Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) is a series of signals-intelligence satellites that have conducted electronic signals intelligence for the U.S. Navy since the early 1970s.[1] The first series of satellites were codenamed "White Cloud" or "PARCAE", while second- and third-generation satellites have used the codenames "Ranger" and "Intruder".
And for anyone saying "well, our sats are going to be in lower orbit" ... that has been done too. If you ever read about satellites powered by nuclear reactors, those were low-orbit radar sats looking for ships.
Mature yet commercially opaque I assume? That seems like a good business model tbh, an existing bench of talent (likely under paid) and an established science and technology, that’s of broad interest to many companies, NGOs, and governments.
This is essentially Hawkeye360's business model and to a lesser extent Aurora Insight. Both are satellite based analytics of RF signals. Hawkeye360 specifically lists Maritime Domain Awareness as one of their focuses:
Yes, the military (intelligence) community have had these capabilities - and more - for quite some time. Some of the same capabilities are being released for "non-military" use, which just means that regulatory agencies etc. can get the same data for non-military ops.
But, as someone who's working on exactly that, it is not easy - and there's a lot of red tape to wade through. The data gets filtered by the military, and then you get whatever scraps are left. Scans/passes of areas with too much military activity tend to be off-limits.
A big threat is that people could start to fingerprint radar signatures, which in turn isn't ideal if you're a, say, navy or intelligence ship.
Not that your adversaries (read: China, Russia, etc.) probably don't have that exact type of data, but it's just standard practice to minimize exposure.
True in the aviation world. I've noticed that most people under, say, 50 or so, like ADS-B (airplanes broadcasting their location) for the safety reasons. But most of the pilots over 50 will say "It's just the government coming up with another way to track you."
There's some yahoo who buzzes my house twice a week in a Cessna (coming and going). He's often under 500' AGL. No ADS-B and haven't gotten a tail number yet. I think it should be illegal to not have it enabled, for exactly this kind of thing.
In fact I wonder if it's even a licensed pilot—William Bushling apparently flew for 20 years without a current FAA license and also didn't use ADS-B; when he finally lost the dice game it took them days to find the wreckage: https://youtu.be/69NvK6YbNtg
Flight plans are not required if you're just out flying VFR. Someone who doesn't like ADS-B probably also doesn't call uncle sam and tell him where he plans to fly.
When I started paying attention to airspace as part of my 107 drone cert, the amount of extreme bullshit flight behavior out of the two local small fields genuinely surprised me. It makes me think it's no wonder general aviation has so many accidents.
(The fields are San Martin and Watsonville in the Bay Area, FWIW.)
You can track them with sites like FlightAware or FlightRadar24. Just zoom in to where your house is. Click on a plane. If it's not on the map, it likely isn't broadcasting ADSB
These services rely on volunteers setting up receivers and feeding them data.
It is entirely possible that there is just no local coverage that would receive the low flying aircraft.
A 30usd rtl-sdr dongle is enough to receive local ads-b signals, if one wants to test it.
They aren't visible on these sites, first thing I checked. Maybe they've requested delisting but I think they're just not broadcasting—specifically to avoid consequences of their reckless flying.
As others have noted these commercial services don't show every plane, the owners of planes may request to hide their planes there, that's why I asked how you can be sure.
Other sites like https://globe.adsbexchange.com or https://globe.adsb.fi don't filter aircrafts, they even show military planes (well, if they have ADS-B enabled). Though they don't have coverage above oceans, as satellite ads-b is expensive. (These sites look nearly the same, as they both use tar1090 as the webui, but they may have different coverage)
These sites, may sometimes have less coverage, as the sites you mentioned are way more popular. But if your area has coverage by these sites, you can be sure that you'll see every plane if it has ADS-B.
You could even replay, if you know the time and date when the plane passed, by appending ?replay to the URL.
Have you tried a super long telephoto lens? If you got like 100 photos in a row you might be able to use some kind of software to blend them and infer the number.
It's only been a couple times a week on random days and times; I'd basically have to camp on my roof to catch them. And they're going full tilt (at least 90 knots) so there's only 5-10 seconds of opportunity. I do have a pretty good long lens on my digital camera, maybe I'll set it up and have it by the door.
4 days late on this but - if an airfcraft is in a sparsely populated area then it is allowed to be below 500' AGL so long as it is 500' away from "person, vessel, vehicle, or structure." This rule is suspended if the aircraft is in the process of taking off or landing (includes "flying the pattern"). I don't know where you live, so it may not apply to you. If you're in a rural-ish area, the person could be taking off from their own land or an airport you're not aware of.
I'd love to hear a genuine argument from someone, of any age, who is anti-ADS-B.
I don't understand the impetus to allow someone to fly a massive, deadly hunk of metal over a community without clarifying their telemetry to that community.
I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law enforcement is now exempt from this requirement in some situations.
> ADS-B data is broadcast every half-second on a 1090MHz, digital data link.
For more than a decade I worked airborne geophysical surveying - hundred thousand to a million+ line kilometre grid draping at 80m ground clearance on routes planned in advance.
The planes ran stable known instrument configurations and were calibrated weekly to measure their individual magnetic and radiometric signature.
Aircraft positioning signals on long haul flights Australia -> India -> Fiji -> Mali weren't an issue.
Extraneous non required signalling during grid surveying was an issue.
A reasonable comprimise was to blip a quick position fix at the end of every fourth or fifth 20 kilometre line run (say) ... otherwise no broadcasts during instrument recording times .. and glow in the dark divers watches for the pilots or random chunks of metal casing there one day and gone the next.
There is no legitimate argument against ADS-B other than "I don't wanna." Not to say that that isn't legitimate and doesn't at least deserve a discussion, but that's really it. There's really no Constitutional or statutory argument against requiring ADS-B.
> There's really no Constitutional or statutory argument against requiring ADS-B.
You could argue it's not a very good one, but it does exist:
"This rulemaking provides an exception to ADS–B requirements, removing the transmission requirement for sensitive operations conducted by Federal, State and local government entities in matters of national defense, homeland security, intelligence and law enforcement."
Yeah I probably wasn't clear in that I meant I'm not aware of any legal basis for saying that requiring ADS-B for private/commercial air traffic is wrong. For example operating a 172 is not a constitutional right so tracking you while you do isn't isn't necessarily a violation of any particular right.
I think it's wrong that the government exempts themselves from it if they're going to require it of everyone else, but that's so far down my list of grievances with the government it's barely worth thinking about :)
The only thing I can think of is for individuals who have credible threats against them. It could be easy enough to delay the relay of that information to the general public by 24hrs or something so that the data is available but poses less use to potential threat actors.
Probably not with the current tech, but there are lots of ways to do it. You don't need to delay the signal, only the information tied to that signal. If you get away from static identifiers and use something like a rotating RSA key, then the data associated with that key could be released at a later time. Not ideal for transparency unless there's a strict retention/audit process for the gold copy (perhaps one of the few legit use cases for immutable block chain since all identifies should be unique too).
Yeah, I mean, I'm a full-time cyclist, so you won't find a lot of car love from me. :-)
But I do think there's a difference in risk. Aviation has a pretty dang good record, and I think that the tradition of transparency in comms and telemetry is a huge part of that.
Both general aviation and motorbikes have a track record (at least in relative terms) that's pretty good _with respect to injuring or killing third parties_, which I thought was the thrust of the inquiry.
And yet somehow flying is safer than driving! As a sibling comment mentions, a lot of that has to do with all of the safety controls in place.
My point is that driving at modern speeds in modern vehicles is actually pretty dangerous, even if not as dangerous as aviation, and yet we as a society exercise very little oversight over the activity.
There are good reasons to not have "ADS-B for cars", mostly related to privacy. Unlike flying, many people heavily rely on cars to carry out their day-to-day activities. But I think it's at least worth thinking about.
Commercial aviation is safer than driving. General aviation is no safer than riding a motorcycle, and may be even more dangerous, so it is definitely not safer than driving. And the people complaining about ADS-B are going to be almost exclusively grumpy old guys flying around in J3 cubs.
Man, that discussion has been around for a long, long time- I'm a grumpy old guy that's been riding motorcycles of one type or another since I was 11, and flying since I was 16. Btw, I'm a huge fan of both ADS-B as well as TCAS... TCAS when I'm flying, ADS-B when I get to watch my son training at Navy Corpus.
Hanging around FBOs/flight lines/bars with pilots that also ride, it's come down to this:
After countless attempts and arguments while trying to normalize accident/fatal accident rates by converting hours flown/miles ridden, statistics do support that GA does seem to be a bit more dangerous than riding.
That having been said, my opinion is that most of the GA risks are in the hands of the pilot, while most of the risks of riding are external to the rider. Most of the worst motorcycle accidents I've seen or heard of involved the rider getting schwacked by a car or truck, while most of the worst GA accidents involved the pilot schwacking him or herself with poor judgement and/or skills that are below MIF. I put a lot of effort into minimizing pilot-induced risk when I fly, so scientifically speaking and all, I -feel- safer when flying than riding, and probably am.
Could you please reference some stats? I've googled before and have never been able to find motorcycle / GA stats... right now your comment sounds like someone quoting a nurse/doctor friend saying "donorcycles"
I don't think that's comparable since there is no rideradar24 where you could check out every ride anyone takes with their car. Also, who owns which plate is not public information.
I believe that plenty of people would object to that level of tracking citing privacy reasons.
True, I suppose that is more like the tail call signs it whatever they're called - only recorded (possibly automatically like ANPR) if someone bothers too, not broadcasted or squawked and ident'd.
There are EU regulations requiring fishing vessels over 15m to use AIS (the UK also abides by these) so within Europe the standards are reasonably consistent. Regulations are considerably more relaxed or less effectively enforced in other jurisdictions which is reflected in the data; it's possible the 98% of all fishing vessels operating off Thailand without AIS are all legal. But given the reputation of larger vessels operating in that region for slavery, perhaps not.
Agree there are privacy-related reasons why you might ideally not want competing vessels seeing which waters you fish, but AIS alone doesn't tell anyone whether it's any better than other waters (and fishermen have no shortage of other data points to plan their activity or other boats to follow if they really don't have any better heuristics). Regulatory evasion is rife even in effectively-regulated areas not least because the industry is convinced some of the regulations are actually wrong, especially when it comes to localised quotas. You knows there's an issue when a former operator of a commercial fleet in Europe tells you candidly, that their skippers (who are all tracked by AIS/VMS) would definitely expect any catch logging system to allow them to lie about which points on their voyage yielded most of the fish....
I have worked with some catch logging data, and there is certainly some weird stuff in some of the data that points to something like that (but super interesting to untangle and figure out, from a personal perspective). It really is a game of finding clear, understandable regulations, but at the same time put a lot of work into checking whether they are upheld.
> Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to have certain sensors on them.
Yeah but as long as no one dares to stand up to the worst offenders - particularly China, who have been under fire for years from their neighborhood in the Philippines [3] all the way to Africa [1][2] - with actual navies to stop and either seize or sink non-compliant ships all of this will be in vain.
The open sea is the last remaining place on Earth where darwinism in its purest form still rules. Might makes right...
Couple of years ago we were relocating my friend's sailboat from Croatia to Mallorca. During my night watches I routinely saw how Italian fishing vessels nearby Calabria turning their AIS off and on, despite local law mandates it to be on during the night.
As a sailor, it was infuriating when I would come across a container ship or some grain hauler with their AIS turned off.
Luckily I have other safety systems in place but damn is that a buzz kill at 3am on a new moon night.
Also another reason you would turn off AIS is if you are hauling precious cargo and don’t want pirates to know your whereabouts. I know this sounds cliche but it’s true. Cargo vessels traveling near pirate activity will often “go dark” to avoid detection and dealing with a Capt. Phillips situation.
So yeah, it’s difficult to get a fix on just how many vessels are out there, big or small. I’ve seen a lot of weird designs and contraptions out at sea.
Since I've observed a bunch of countries directly, it is more the following:
- Fisheries may not (historically or present day) be a huge part of their economy, and has therefore been neglected for years.
- Not enough infrastructure due to economic neglect.
- Huge revolving door of officials. One month you deal with one person, six months its another one. You don't know if they are real professionals, or someone placed there (party stooge, nepotism, you name it).
- No cooperation between fisheries/marine agencies, and navy/police/coastal guard.
- And, yes, some corruption I'd assume.
I have a concrete example:
We were invited to a developing country to assess their systems, and consult them on how to move forward. They were/are losing millions and millions due to illegal trawling.
Arrive at the HQ, which was a run down office where a handful of people were working. All data was shared via excel spreadsheets, no real systems to work on, lots of paper forms that someone had to digitize. Someone looking at MarineTraffic from time to time.
That's the state of some of these countries.
The illegal fishers are long out of their EEZ before anyone can react.
Which is fascinating because sulphur emissions counteract (mask might be a better term) global warming. Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this year.
Wild when you see just how much emissions are still being released and still presumably cooling the Earth, meaning the effects of climate change we're seeing now are still likely a dampened version of the true long term impact.
> Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this year.
Was there an outright study of the "main culprits" part of this? As I recall there was some evidence but then the main discourse was based on a lot of extrapolation by a viral tweet.
Not to my knowledge, which is why I used the word "suspected" since I think this falls on the "makes intuitive sense, but would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to be completely incorrect" category of hypotheses.
I consider "suspected" to be the least level of evidence while still taking something into consideration as a potential cause. A suspected murderer might not even have been arrested, let alone convicted.
We do know that sulphur emissions have a global cooling effect, and we do know that sulphur emissions recently were reduced, so it's a reasonable hypothesis from first principles.
To be clear, I'm absolutely not promoting increased sulphur emissions as a solution to our climate problems. Moreso pointing out that all those emissions are potentially masking the true severity of our current predicament.
I recall there was a major push against Acid Rain in the 70s-90s. If SO2 emissions were effectively regulated in that period (easy to do because “acid” is scary) then what magnitude of impact did that have on our post-90s warming?
Oh indeed, also look at the scale for numbers - concentration is far higher there. It's just interesting that the shipping lanes are visible against the low background levels at sea.
Currently working in this space on orbital sensor systems, there are about to be a lot of fun ways to hunt these dark vessels and ID them/track them back to their ports. For instance, there are already small satellite constellations that can geo-locate and profile them based on their other RF emissions aside from AIS. The space is also heating up rapidly as this is becoming a national defense priority for a number of different countries that don't want to deal with illegal fishing among a host of other issues that anonymous vessels near their shores present.
This is really interesting, du you mind maybe sharing some names of companies or research papers here? I am working with this topic myself in my phd, however more from the AIS perspective. While AIS is a great data source it is indeed easy to fool, all these initiatives to illuminate the dark spots are very interesting.
There's a bunch of work with sentinel sar sats and a few others tracking marine VHF and radar emissions. I can't go much into the newer efforts though unfortunately.
Thank you for your suggestions! I'm mainly looking at how we can use AIS data to gain knowledge about the maritime domain, with an emphasis on fisheries in the north (norwegian sea and the rest of the arctic) , but as there is so many interesting cases here I constantly go down side paths admittedly, especially if you pull in things like operations research and the newer advances of deep learning.
>>"...vessels absent from public monitoring systems, often termed “dark fleets,” pose major challenges for protecting and managing natural resources. Researchers found numerous dark fishing vessels inside many marine protected areas, and a high concentration of vessels in many countries’ waters that previously showed little-to-no vessel activity by public monitoring systems."
Seems like a really good application for Jerry Pournelle's "Rods From God kinetic weapons concept[0].
Trying to make protected marine animals disappear? You might just disappear.
(Zero sympathy for any kind of poaching; we're making ecosystems go extinct fast enough)
China! I can’t believe it! Why aren’t there actual consequences for this? The world needs to have harsher sanctions to China before it’s too late. If China becomes self sufficient, global civilization is literally over.
> The data shows that factories are producing less and hiring fewer people," said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China. "(The data) could also show a loss of confidence in government policy," she added, warning factory activity was unlikely to improve anytime soon as other economic problems dominate. [0]
> A growing number of companies are looking to move their manufacturing out of China. Companies are examining their heavy concentration in China. Boards and companies are reevaluating their risks and reviewing mitigation strategies. [1]
Hopefully it would reveal that. As human civilization expands so will our impact on the planet. Luckily the more wealthy we become the more we can do something about the problems that our advancements create.
But I would rather have ex. the problem of how to fix plastic in the oceans, than not have access to plastic at all.
Cause all problems are soluble and all solutions to problems create new problems. They are however better problems.
I can’t help but wonder about the privacy implications of tech like this. I’m no fishing vessel, but I’m not that much smaller than some fishing vessels. Certainly my car is of comparable size. How long is it before humans can be tracked in, or out of, their cars, by anyone with a sufficiently adept satellite? That question also implies it isn’t already happening.
It is really expensive to have satellites that can visually track a human. The Keyhole spy satellites are the size of Hubble (not coincidentally) and can resolve 3in. The much cheaper and smaller Planet Labs SkySat have resolution of 12in and could track a car.
The issue is that would need constellation covering the whole Earth. That is doable, but not needed for observation so nobody has done it. Ships have an empty background and can be tracked intermittently while people and cars require continuous tracking.
Drones would be better, but would still need a huge number to provide continuous tracking. CCTV cameras would be easiest but limited in area. Finally, tracking cell phones is doable, and easier to do with satellites.
As it is in Norway this is an ongoing debate - where the smaller fishing vessels have been exempt from having the mandatory AIS equipment, citing privacy as some of the reasons. In the government portal for showing AIS data they do not show data of ships that is below 45m length to preserve their privacy. However larger fishing vessels have large crews depending on the mode of fishing, so it becomes less a case of tracking single persons (and maybe in the fishermen more a case of tracking commercial competitors).
Companies like Persistent Surveillance Systems (https://www.pss-1.com/) have already been doing that since 2004.
Disclosure: I work for a satellite imagery company. As far as I know, our data is not usable for the level of tracking described in your comment. However, I likely have a personal bias towards data transparency. Opinions expressed are my own.
> By synthesizing GPS data with five years of radar and optical imagery, the researchers were able to identify vessels that failed to broadcast their positions. Using machine learning, they then concluded which of those vessels were likely engaged in fishing activity.
The ML behind this is most probably building on the work of Kroodsma et. al (2018) [1]. (Kroodsma is affiliated with Global Fishing Watch). While AIS data can contain information about whether a ship is engaged in fishing, this is sparsely used - even though there is no ill intent. By using spatio-temporal data such as position and speed, and expert labelled segments of activities they trained CNN's to identify fishing activity from other activities. Since these are vessels that did not broadcast their positions, i.e did not broadcast AIS data my guess is that they used the optical imagery to construct movement patterns, maybe even speeds (by looking at the wake patterns) as well as their position in general as input data to similar constructed CNN's. They could also put in info such as whether the ship was in or near fishing grounds, and whether the ship showed signs to travel to port to offload any catch, or met up with a vessel to transfer the catch.
I'm currently in the middle of my phd where I am working with these types of data and methods, its extremely interesting.
[1] David A. Kroodsma et al. ,Tracking the global footprint of fisheries.Science359,904-908(2018).DOI:10.1126/science.aao5646
nice! So like a bit of domain expert input, a lot of space time data, and maybe things like velocity. I guess the main question is what's the biggest difference between the data profile of an illegal fishing boat and a recreational boat? I'm not sure what you're filtering OUT...
Yes, a bit of that! If the fishing vessel is emitting AIS data you will already have the code from the AIS transmitter as well as the IMO number (like a social security number but for ships), and by using these numbers you can see whether it is a fishing vessel or not. These can ofcouse be spoofed in the case of illegal fishing vessels, but I think the likelihood of this happening in the terretorial waters of a country with an established coastal authority is slim.
In that case it is more about identifying the actual fishing activity than the fishing boat itself. Each mode of fishing (which requires different types of gear and types of ships) will leave a distinct signature. For example bottom-trawling will require a certain (low) speed (here a big net is dragged behind the vessel), purse seines will make somewhat circular patterns (they lay out a net in a circle around a school of fish). So often you want to identify these fishing activities to, for example link them up with a later delivery of catch, but also to investigate and estimate things like fuel usage.
Even if you don't have the IMO number of the ship you can look for these patterns, so it can be redused to whether the ship is in proximity of a fishing ground, if they display the movement patterns that is the signature of fishing activity, and later if they meet up with other vessels or go in to land to deliver their catch. A recreational boat (given that it is large enough to be suspected to be a fishing vessel just by where it is and how large it is) would perhaps have a constant high velocity (or complete stand still) for instance.
A simplified example: a person is jogging on the road that passes your apple trees you would not suspect them of stealing apples, if they are slowly walking - maybe (but if they stay no the road - probably not), if they are jogging through your garden of apple trees its certainly suspicious, but if they are slowly walking through your garden I would send a coastal guard ship ;)
A less simplified one would be to try to match up fishing related activity with how much fish a vessel is delivering (is it delivering 20 tonnes but have spent two full weeks with fishing activity?). Then maybe see if they have the right permissions to do that kind of fisheries in that zone at that time of the year etc.
You seem to have a serious misconception about either the US Navy or the oceans.
There are actually satellites that do it. Over the course of many days. And it's not easy or quick to act on their feedback. Something like a military or police patrol simply can not happen.
This isn't true at all. I worked for a long time on the first implementation of the Navy's Maritime Domain Awareness System and my wife currently works for the NRO's Enterprise Collection Orchestration system that auto-tasks orbital surveillance platforms in response to automatically detected global events. Many of the capabilities are classified, but I can assure the US Navy both knows about and has some means to respond quickly (not necessarily by dispatching a manned vessel) to anything bigger than a driftwood log that appears on an Earth ocean.
The reason they don't is the Navy is not a law enforcement agency and this is not their mission.
I mean it could, but it would be pretty expensive. We know generally where ships go to fish. You watch those areas and get an idea of the various ships, you stage your ships nearby and wait. If you're really keen on being targeted you could follow ships back to port and over time have assets there wait to ID the individuals on the ship.
The problem is this would cost millions of dollars and take weeks or months unless you got very lucky. The Navy could do it in their sleep but why would they? Nobody who cares enough about this problem has the means to execute it, and nobody with the means cares.
While that may be true in principle, it seems likely to me that price is a very important factor for many or even most people, so much so that they don't look too closely at provenance. Were that not the case then I would expect the market for battery chickens to have dried up by now, for example.
I know nothing about the industry but I did wonder if an innocent excuse is that as a fishing vessel you wouldn't want to tell everyone else where you are fishing?
They do claim that, although they should still share with the appropriate regulatory body where they were fishing. I know at least some of them there are rules about what can be done with fishers' data for exactly that reason.
More likely they don't want to follow quota, rules about what they can or where they can fish.
That often appears to be true in the non-innocent sense that they stop telling everyone else where they're fishing somewhere near the edge of zones they're not allowed to fish in...
Small shops next to large banks almost never get robbed - convenience stores in a neighborhood that cops tend to ignore... that's a different story. Most of the world's oceans are pretty thoroughly patrolled so if the risk is the same you might as well go after the bank.
Let's call the largest operator of illegal fishing boats by its name: China
> This Chinese fleet is also categorized by The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime as the largest purveyor of illegal fishing in the world. Our reporting revealed Chinese vessels illegally entering the waters of other countries, disabling locational transponders in violation of Chinese law, breaking U.N. sanctions that prohibit foreigners fishing in North Korean waters, transmitting dual identities (or “spoofing”), finning of protected shark species, fishing without a license, and using prohibited gear.
It is worth noting the ranking is also weighted, and China consistently weights 25-30-% worse than #2 in each table. (For some reason your deep linking isn’t bringing me to the tables you’re referring to so not sure which specifically you’re referring to).
But you’re right - everyone is screwing the planet up in their own messed up ways. I think rather than making bogey men out of the “bad guys,” we should realize this fact. But with that fact realized, China does act with a particularly egregious lack of responsibility and accountability that belies their stature.
> China consistently weights 25-30-% worse than #2 in each table
I agree with your larger point, but I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. If you look at table 4 on p. 32 (i.e. printed page number; PDF page number is 21, and the complete data can be found at the end of the PDF, starting on (printed page number) p. 110), you'll see that the scores are derived from three indicators: (i) the prevalence of IUU (Illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing, (ii) each country's vulnerability to IUU fishing, and (iii) their response to it. Only in the Prevalence table for 2021 does China "weight 25-30% worse" than #2 (South Korea). In the Vulnerability table, China's score is only marginally worse (3.3-5%) than Japan, the second-worst in both 2019 and 2021. In the Response table, China (3.31) is not even among the top 10 worst countries, scoring comparably to Israel (3.29) and better than Singapore (3.87) and UAE (3.82).
Also worth noting: the Prevalence score is calculated based on the number of vessels recorded on IUU lists (see p.12), so we'd expect countries with a larger number of fishing vessells to score higher (i.e. worse) in respect of Prevalence, which is why even the US made it to #8 worst in the Prevalence table for 2021.
> For some reason your deep linking isn’t bringing me to the tables you’re referring to
I don't have the machine to test this right now, but it's possible that the ?page=N search parameter trick only works in Chromium.
I linked directly to the pages in the report containing the very tables you've copy-pasted. It's literally one click away.
In case it's not obvious, the entire point is that the actual statistics is not very convenient for the "good-guy v. bad-guy" framing. Why else would I only highlight countries considered in the US as part of the "good guys" camp?
While we're on this topic, US's own ranking drastically worsened between 2019 and 2021, from being #66 worst globally (see p.121) to #27 worst (see p. 111):
> When considering prevalence, five countries – South Korea, Seychelles, the USA, Senegal and Saint Vincent & the Grenadines – entered the list of worst-performing countries in 2021 for the first time, with China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Ecuador remaining in the worst performers. (p.28)
Apparently the vast majority of crews on normal legal global logistics shipping vessels are Phillipino. I wonder how many of the Chinese shark-murder slaver vessels are too.
I don't know anything about this particular issue, but generally from what I recall, Chinese companies are effectively the CCP by their own admission. They have full control.
The crux is: People require protein, daily. Feeding a population of 1.5 billion people requires quite a a lot of protein.
Nothing leads more directly to civil unrest than hunger and famine.
An operation of this scale likely involves tens of thousands of people. Those people have families, are paid salaries, have grievances, etc.
In fact, bet a few of them are here on HN right now and could probably give us a first hand account while on the high seas trying to browse the only bit of the internet that still works with a 32kbps high latency internet connection...
Unless you’re able to impound a significant % of their fleet, their profits would still cover the losses and this wouldn’t serve as an effective deterrent. Sinking the ship, on the other hand, would make the crews really uneasy about going into your coastal waters. People don’t weigh probability of dying against a survivability of the whole fleet.
Not that simple: Most of these Chinese fishing boats are classified as Chinese Merchant Marines, a devision of the Chinese Military, so sinking them is an act of war. This is a real headache for managing illegal Chinese Fishing of Vietnam waters and other countries within the 9 and 11 dashed lines.
if commercial fishing continues like this it's a "when" not an "if," the fish population of the ocean is estimated to be half of what it was in 1970... some species are down more than 80%
You don't need to be a "rabid environmentalist" to be alarmed by what is happening to our oceans:
Ocean fish are being literally depleted, with bluefin tuna alone being down 97% from historical levels. [1]
Commercial fleets use sonar to isolate and annihilate entire populations. Nets have been as wide as 50 miles, resulting in massive indiscriminate marine death as bycatch. Only 2.5km nets are legal now- still more than wide enough to result in a lot of bycatch, and there is no reason to assume these dark fleets are abiding by UN law. [2]
So? That doesn't make you above the law, or guarantee that you will behave well. Even if you personally do all the right things, laws aren't written to satisfy individuals - there are plenty of fishing companies out there ruining the oceans.
Is goverment going to hire me, so I work for them? Where do I apply? Also I want gold medal for being a hero (minimum 130grams, 20carats), where is dispensery? I have several millions of heroes!!!!
Ah so the reasonable scenario is that things will be ruined for the lifetimes of almost everyone currently on earth. Not really that weird that some people would see that as a negative.
I imagine it's much easier to control on the trade side of things if governments really want to. Fish have to be brought relatively fresh to markets where there is demand.
Depending on the species. There are factory ships, such as the name suggest have onboard factories that process the fish into filets, pack, freeze and stow the fish, enabling the vessels to stay longer out at sea - limited either by their cargo capacity or quota. Arguably this is good for the quality of the fish as well since it is frozen fresh.
First off, a big reason as to why - is because the laws differ from country to country. Some countries, like Norway for example, require shipping vessels over a certain length to broadcast their positions through AIS, VMS.
This may not be the case for, say, UK.
There are arguments to be had from both systems as to WHY you wouldn't want to broadcast your positions at all times - a typical one is that other could easily infer your fishing fields (fishing patterns are trivial, if you've worked with this you can easily spot what tools they are fishing with, and likely what species they are going for - don't need ML-based systems for that. Any fisher or fisheries analyst can spot the patterns), and thus go after that.
The other is privacy.
A very typical thing is that ships turn off their AIS as soon as they enter international waters. There is no enforcement of that, and many developed countries have practically zero resources to fight illegal fishing, from a technological point of view. UNDP has a program which is aimed at helping developing countries with the tech and training to detect illegal fishing, but there's a long way to go. Developing countries desperately need the data, which is either owned by governments, or private actors. AIS data is either picked up by satellites, or base stations. VMS systems are expensive, but also allow for ships to transfer catch reports and similar - but is unfortunately not always enforced in a good way.
But tech is becoming better. Satellites with NAV/marine radar detectors are in orbit. Long-range drones with sensors are a thing. Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to have certain sensors on them. Lots of ML-assisted tools for automating detection and analysis is being introduced and used.