Geospatial technologies have advanced rapidly in the last decade and the results are outstanding. Earth Observation data can reveal environmental and human activity in seconds and has been used in different cases such as ocean conservation, wildfires, and urban heatwaves, just to name a few. The Global Fishing Watch institution has worked intensively to disclose the Fishing activity and successfully has supported many countries to protect their marine resources from illegal fishing and overfishing with their data analytics in marine regions such as Palau, Galapagos, Nieu, and more.
Excessive fishing activity brings unbalance to the marine ecosystem chain and endangers marine megafauna habitat with strikes and unwanted catches. In the Galapagos Marine Reserve, the story of "Hope" the whale shark tagged in 2019 next to Marine Megafauna Foundation (MMF) and Galapagos Whale Shark Project (GWSP) became international. "Hope" started giving satellite tracks from the surface with unrealistic speed likely caught by one of the fishing vessels nearby. Learn more in this story about fishing fleets targeting Galapagos Marine Reserve by MMF.
Unfortunately, "Hope" was not the last shark to be accidentally caught. Afterward, three more whale sharks tagged in 2021 next to GWSP started giving signals from land. The whale sharks were reported on the coasts of Ecuador and Perú by the alert system of the Wildlife Tracker geo-framework. The Galapagos Whale Shark Project in collaboration with GIS4 Wildlife Movement Analytics has written a report about the conservation effort done and the risk of the Fishing Activity involved in these events. Find the story here, written by Sofia Green.
China fishing vessels targeting Galapagos Islands
The Chinese vessels are giant refrigerators that can operate in any ocean around the world (motherships). Their fishing activity has been reported as illegal in 2017 [1] with a boat full of shark fins caught inside the Marine Sanctuary where it is strictly forbidden to fish.
A recent report from the New York Times [2] investigated how the Chinese fishing activity targets the surrounding of the Galapagos Marine Reserve in 2020 and 2021. The main issue is that marine megafauna species require a large extent of habitat and commonly it goes beyond the limits of the marine protected area. If the fishing activity continues with no plans to be controlled the accidents with marine megafauna individuals are likely to keep happening including vessel strikes, accidental catch, and illegal fishing.
Rich and ecologically diverse, the waters around the Galápagos Islands have attracted local fishermen for centuries. Now, these waters face a much larger, more rapacious hunter: China.
Myers, Chang, Watkins, and Fu from the New York Times (2022)
Data License and attribution
- _Apparent Fishing Effort Hours – Global Fishing Watch_Dataset is under the license of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). The license can be found in the metadata once you have downloaded the apparent fishing effort from Global Fishing Watch Portal or in the Download Portal as well. Users of this data are allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. Attribution should be done to Global Fishing Watch.
- Sky the whale shark and 3 individuals found on land – Provided by Galapagos Whale Shark Project Visualization (images) are open access under the license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. The public is allowed to share the content with the condition of citing attribution like: Bryan R. Vallejo, & Sofia Green. (2022). Ocean satellite data implementation in Wildlife Tracker v0.3: eco-geographical variables and fishing pressure tested with Galapagos Whale Shark Project (WildlifeTracker0.3). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6477840
Geospatial technology unveils China’s fishing activity in Galapagos
Thanks to the Global Fishing Watch institution and its effort in processing millions of locations logged with satellites we are able to obtain indicators of fishing activity such as Fishing Effort Hours. The fishing activity has been overlaid with "Sky" the whale shark. This bio-logged data was provided by Galapagos Whale Shark Project to its partner GIS4 Wildlife Movement Analytics for experimentation with Geospatial data. The results have been successful so far and the fishing activity pattern is revealed over the whale shark tracking data.
Methodology overview
The methodology used for these visualizations is a basic filter by attribute. The data downloaded represents the indicator Fishing Effort Hours and it was downloaded and displayed around the Galapagos Marine Reserve. You will find different cuts from the public datasets of Global Fishing Watch like Fishing Effort, Anchorages, Carriers, and some extra datasets. The one used in this article is the Fishing Effort by Vessels and Flags. The attribute Flag will let you subset the Fishing Effort data by the country of your interest such as Ecuador, China, Chile, Perú, Colombia, and any other country available in data. You can download this data on Data and Code Page.
If you are willing to know more about how Fishing Effort Hours indicator was calculated refer to Global Fishing Watch: Research Page and Technology Page
Application and usability for conservation
The visualization of fishing pressure over marine megafauna trajectories supports the understanding of zones where marine species might be at risk by fishing activity. Risks involve vessel strikes, illegal fishing, and accidental catch. To solve this issue and promote marine wildlife conservation we have different applications for this visualization method:
- Re-schedule fishing activity based on seasons where marine megafauna tends to visit risk zones.
- Real-time alert system to conservation institutions and fishing authorities when marine megafauna is entering into risk or high fishing pressure zone.
- Uncovering countries that might be responsible for putting at risk marine megafauna species.
If you are willing to know more about the conservation efforts based on data you can find more information on GIS4 Wildlife Page
Pattern visualization
In this quick look, I am showing the Fishing Effort Hours matching the time range of Sky including all flags involved. The time range was taken from July 1st, 2021 to April 1st, 2022.
The next step, which helps to comprehend the fishing activity risk to marine megafauna can be visualized by adding the "Sky" trajectory and filtering the fishing activity with a Chinese flag.
Two things to point out visually:
Sky have stop when it reaches the first concentration of fishing activity in the southern area. Clearly, the stress of the fishing activity interrupts the free movement of the marine megafauna
Then, suddenly, Sky stops the movement when it reaches the northern zone with higher pressure of fishing activity. Sky was reported last time on March 24th, 2022. Naturally, we understood that Sky stopped sending signals because it is common to lose signals from tagged whale sharks. But after watching that the last location of Sky was in an endangered zone I started to have doubts.
We can not certainly say what stopped the logs of Sky the whale shark but we can clearly see that during its trajectory the individual was exposed to fishing activity.
As we can see Chinese vessels are encountering marine megafauna outside the marine protected area. These events increase the probability of problems happening that put in danger the life of delicate marine species. The solutions are rather complicated but scheduling fishing activities based on marine visitors is an option. Depending on the acts of authorities this solution can be provided with real-time geospatial technologies.
Next steps
Once the data have been matched in time with the marine megafauna tracking data, the next step is to start modeling the risk zones caused by fishing pressure. A good approach is to create a buffer in locations where the marine megafauna species are frequently exposed in time and distance to the fishing vessels. This model is in process and the ambition is to have it working in real-time for quick response in conservation efforts. This model is willing to be implemented in software for ocean conservation like the Wildlife Tracker.
Conclusion
Geospatial technologies can certainly support conservation efforts of marine wildlife. The fishing activity can be revealed and overlaid in marine individuals’ trajectory to understand how it might affect their habitat. If authorities decide to obtain the proper technologies for MPAs management they are able to control the scheduling of fishing activities that can put at risk the life of protected marine species. As a professional in geospatial analysis, I can clearly say that this is just the beginning between marine megafauna conservation and its affection caused by fishing activity. Many ideas come into my mind about how to analyze deeper the relationship between these datasets and certainly reveal more insights such as stop detections or flag annotation to tracks.
Written by:
Geospatial scientist creator of "Wildlife Tracker"
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References
[1] Bale, Rachael (2017). Thousands of Sharks Found on Boat in Huge Illegal Haul. National Geographic. From
[2] Steven Lee Myers, Agnes Chang, Derek Watkins, and Claire Fu (2022). How China Targets the Global Fish Supply. New York Times.