Illegal fishing is mapped from space – Galileo

 New technology comes to map – and try to decrease – illegal fishing on the planet. If you depend on the first feature, the criminal activity that happens daily on an industrial scale might be doomed.

 The proposal of environmentalists is to use sophisticated technologies to end the “invisibility cloak” of large fishing vessels active in illegal areas. According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), over three-quarters of the fish stock already exceeding their sustainable limits. – Among addition, much of this material remains unregistered and irregular

But with the help of SpaceQuest and Google, the activists finally succeeded financial funds to use satellite data in these searches. The two environmental groups Oceana and SkyTruth were the first to build a global surveillance system capable of locating illegal anywhere on the planet.

The prototype called Global Fishing Watch was launched during the conference IUCN World Parks in Sydney. The tool makes use of Google maps software, following more than 25 000 registered as fishing vessels or were moving into regions that would suggest the same.

However, the test was conducted with information from 2012 and 2013, but “the plan is to construct a public model will approach a date and time,” says Jackie Savitz, Oceana. “Then you can notice the difference in criminal activity with days or hours, fast enough to denounce” the activist continues.

With four satellites operating in your favor, the SpaceQuest continue to track radio broadcasts that Large ships are required to submit. And although the system is considered “perfect”, the progress made with this technique are very large. The filter can transform 3.7 billion signals sent by ships 300 million, reaching an average of 25 000 fishing boats at sea.

The next step is to enable notifications on ships live stream for satellites . “Our product is not far from a public platform. Everything has worked well with the help of Google, “says Woods.

 But for now the prototype is only working with boats marked “blacklisted” from environmental groups: “Rulers usually know these activities, but still do nothing. We will use this tool to pinpoint the problem and bring public pressure. Maybe they decide to do their jobs? “Added the activist.