“I’m excited for this opportunity to see the dark fleet,” said David Kroodsma, Global Fishing Watch Research Program Director. Another possibility is that VIIRS is detecting foreign boats that are not carrying VMS because they are poaching from Indonesian waters. It is also possible that some vessels detected only by VIIRS meet the size requirement but have switched off their VMS or have a faulty device.

The team believes most of the VIIRS detections are from fishing vessels not required to carry VMS because they are under the 30 gross ton (GT) threshold established by the government of Indonesia. This work indicates that the addition of VIIRS data can greatly enhance transparency in commercial fishing in Indonesia. While a small number may be other types of vessels, most ships do not use lights bright enough for detection. The vast majority of these vessels are likely to be fishing vessels using bright lights to attract fish. The idea is to identify fishing vessels that are not picked up by other monitoring systems and to test and refine the use of VIIRS for identifying and distinguishing different types of fishing vessels.īy cross matching VMS from Indonesia with VIIRS, the team found that roughly 80 percent of VIIRS detections could not be correlated to a vessel broadcasting VMS. Through the partnership, Global Fishing Watch and NOAA are matching Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data from the Indonesian government with NOAA’s satellite based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which reveals the locations of brightly lit vessels at night.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to improve understanding of the activity of fishing vessels in Indonesian waters. January 16, 2018: Global Fishing Watch has entered into a new data-sharing partnership with the U.S. Night-time imagery with monitoring data from fishing vessels. Bright Lights Reveal the “Dark” Fleet A new partnership between Global Fishing Watch and NOAA matches

Fishing in the dark definition