Global Fishing Watch
International nonprofit using satellite technology, AI, and machine learning to monitor human activity at sea
About
Global Fishing Watch is an international nonprofit that creates and publicly shares knowledge about human activity at sea. It was founded in 2015 by Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google, and established as an independent organization in June 2017 after launching at the U.S. State Department's Our Ocean Conference.
Satellite imagery, GPS data, and machine learning are used to analyze industrial activity on the ocean. The work ships as an Interactive Map, Marine Manager portal, Vessel Viewer, and open APIs and datasets. Planet provides high-resolution coastal imagery, and research datasets are produced with scientific institutions.
Users include governments doing vessel monitoring, fishers demonstrating compliance, researchers, and indigenous stewardship communities such as Rapa Nui. The stated mission is to make human activity at sea common knowledge so the global ocean can be used fairly and sustainably.