A vessel tracking tool introduced by WWF and its partner navama aims to put sustainable fisheries on the map and help tackle the problem of overfishing and illegal fishing.
TransparentSea offers fisheries worldwide the possibility of making their fishing activities transparent by allowing for their vessels to be tracked on a regular basis.
Alfred Schumm, WWF’s Smart Fishing Initiative leader, said: “Fisheries which cooperate with us can show their customers that they are committed to legal and responsible fishing by using our vessel tracking tool and service to make fishing operations transparent and demonstrate that they are not involved in illegal fishing activities.”
WWF said it does not intend to expose illegal activities of fishermen but to promote transparency at sea and demonstrate that fisheries management all over the world needs to be improved.
One participant is Sea Quest, a tuna fishing company in Fiji in the South Pacific, which agreed to have its fishing activities monitored and evaluated by WWF and navama back in 2013.
WWF said it can combine its AIS data with other fishery track data including freely sourced Vessel Monitoring Systems and share the results with fisheries to improve sustainability.
Added to this, it operates a web based fishery track data analysis platform for experts where information about global AIS coverage, individual shared fishery tracks, marine protected areas, wind and waves, track patterns, ports, and economic data are combined and visualised to provide a holistic view of fishery activities.
WWF and navama's vision is to make AIS installation mandatory for every commercial fishing vessel to improve both safety and transparency.
