Source: OceanMind
Author: Nick Wise
Machine learning is helping OceanMind revolutionise the function of its fisheries analysts thanks to some significant growth in technical capability. Encompassing a highly sophisticated system that performs in-depth computational analysis, OceanMind can automatically analyse maritime information from a wide variety of sources.
Rather than monitoring the seas and investigating all fishing activities for compliance in an area of interest, analysts can now focus their attention specifically on the anomalies for possible illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing that might otherwise go unnoticed. Previously, fisheries analysts manually searched for fishing activity using various datasets such as Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) to track data for a particular geographical location. The new advanced system has already incorporated a colossal amount of data including AIS, VMS and satellite observations, along with other sources such as licencing data, fishing regulations and vessel registries.
OceanMind continues to grow its data bank and utilise new data sources as they become available. Machine learning enables fishing activity to be identified and corroborated automatically, allowing OceanMind’s fisheries analysts to focus specifically on those anomalies that characterise possible IUU fishing activity and investigate them further.
The system is secure, quick and effective, with a very high identification success rate, preventing copious examples of IUU fishing from slipping through the net.
This new technology is trailblazing, having been designed to support the fisheries compliance and enforcement workflows and processes required for analysts to quickly provide detailed, actionable insight, tailored to each project’s objectives.
Adding greater strength to its technological capability, OceanMind has an internationally distributed analyst team covering all three major ocean basins, with each analyst possessing significant ‘in the field’ knowledge and experience of fisheries monitoring and compliance.