Conservationists released a plan to map illegal fishing — from outer space — by tapping into the very global positioning and fish-finding mechanisms that help lead industrial-scale fishermen to the fish.
Soon the general public will be armed with space-based reconnaissance of the global fleet to create overfishing maps.
Crews on big fishing boats deploy an impressive arsenal of technology, ranging from advanced sonars to GPS navigation and mapping systems, as they chase down prey and trawl the seabed, according to Wired.
These tools are so effective that roughly a third of the world’s fisheries are now over-harvested and more than three-quarters of the stocks that remain have hit their sustainable limit, according to the FAO. For some species, most of the catch is unreported, unregulated or illegal.
