EU Fish­ing Fleet Monitoring

Glob­al Fish­ing Watch

The uncon­trolled increase in fish­ing activ­i­ties in many Mediter­ranean areas has led to chron­ic over­fish­ing and left most marine life endan­gered. Despite some mea­sures to con­tain fish­ing effort and reduce at least the EU fleet capac­i­ty, there are not yet clear signs of an inver­sion of the exploita­tion trend. Fur­ther­more, very lit­tle has been done to man­age the impact of Mediter­ranean fish­eries on the wider envi­ron­ment – con­tribut­ing to the dire sit­u­a­tion of the Mediter­ranean Sea.

Glob­al Fish­ing Watch is analysing fish­ing activ­i­ty in areas with sen­si­tive habi­tats, in sup­port of marine pro­tect­ed area des­ig­na­tion and enforce­ment in the Mediter­ranean Sea. This analy­sis will use the pub­lic data avail­able on the EU fleet and merge it with oth­er detec­tion meth­ods such as Syn­thet­ic Aper­ture Radar (SAR) which will allow detec­tion of the ​‘dark fleet’ — those not shar­ing their posi­tion with Auto­mat­ic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem (AIS).

For more information visit: https://globalfishingwatch.org/