  Across all major industrial fishing sectors, overfishing due to overcapacity
and lack of compliance in fishery governance has led to a decline in biomass of
many global fish stocks. Overfishing threatens ocean biodiversity, global food
security, and the livelihoods of law abiding fishermen. To address this issue,
Global Fishing Watch (GFW) was created to bring transparency to global
fisheries using computer science and big data analytics. A product of a
partnership between Oceana, SkyTruth and Google, GFW uses the Automatic
Identification System, or AIS, to analyze the movement of vessels at sea. AIS
provides vessel location data, and GFW uses this information to track global
vessel movement and apply algorithms to classify vessel behavior as "fishing"
or "non-fishing" activity. Now publicly available, anyone with an internet
connection can monitor when and where trackable commercial fishing appears to
be occurring around the world. Hundreds of millions of people around the world
depend on our ocean for their livelihoods, and many more rely on it for food.
Collectively, the various applications of GFW will help reduce overfishing and
illegal fishing, restore the ocean's abundance, and ensure sustainability
through better monitoring and governance of our marine resources.
