Illegal and unregulated fishing

Illegal and unregulated fishing monitoring tracks vessel presence, apparent fishing effort, dark-vessel detection, and compliance alerts across protected areas, exclusive economic zones, regional seas, and global fishing grounds.^[1][2][3][4]

AIS-based global fishing effort mapping processed tens of billions of messages and tracked more than 70,000 industrial fishing vessels from 2012 to 2016.^[1]

AIS-derived fishing effort is incomplete for dark-vessel detection because vessels may not broadcast, may disable AIS, or may be outside reception coverage.^[2][4]

SAR ship detection identifies non-cooperative vessels without AIS and works day or night under cloud, making it central to IUU monitoring.^[3][4]