Overfishing of the world’s oceans is a huge and immediate problem. Back in 2002, the nations participating in the World Summit on Sustainable Development agreed to end overfishing by 2015. Suffice it say, it didn’t happen.  Indeed, some scientists are predicting the complete collapse of commercial fisheries by 2050, if the rate of worldwide overfishing is not addressed.

Not all news is bad, however. We recently posted about how roughly 1.3 million square miles of the ocean have been protected by new maritime sanctuaries in the last year alone. This raises the question, however, “how can these new sanctuaries be protected from illegal fishing?”  It takes a lot of fisheries vessels to adequately patrol over a million square miles of ocean.  One answer may be by using “big data”.  Google has partnered with SkyTruth and Oceana to produce a new tool to track global fishing activity. Known as Global Fishing Watch, the interactive web tool uses satellite data to provide detailed vessel tracking and aims to harness the power of citizen engagement to tackle the issue of overfishing.

Will Global Fishing Watch and technology like it work? It is far too soon to tell.  Because GFW uses AIS to tracking fishing vessels, critics argue that fishing poachers will manipulate their AIS signal so as to avoid tracking. That being said, even its critics acknowledge that  GFW is a step in the right direct despite its potential shortcomings and that the merging of big-data and environmentalism may begin to address challenging problems like overfishing.

Global Fishing Watch | Technology Illuminating the Global Fishing Fleet