Protecting our Oceans
Protecting our wild fisheries through digital surveillance of our precious oceans.
Project Budget* - $1.5M
Partner Co-investment - $0.9M
Supercluster Co-investment - $0.7M
MDA Systems – $0.32 M
VizworX Inc. – $0.34 M
*Contracted amounts as of September 30, 2020.
Project Collaborators
Project Overview
Humanity has long relied on the world’s five oceans to sustain life as well as support marine transportation, tourism, fishing and energy generation. Together, these oceans generate goods and services worth $2.5 trillion every year, enough to make them the seventh largest economy on the planet.
However, the fisheries and aquaculture sectors that provide food across the globe and livelihoods for almost 12 per cent of the world’s population are under threat from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. This activity costs the ocean economy more than $23 billion a year and endangers the sustainability of marine wildlife and the fishing industry.
Illegal fishing is typically done by ‘dark vessels’, which do not broadcast their location or appear in public monitoring systems. The threat to fish stocks is real and it is growing. Currently about 30 per cent of all fish stocks are overfished, and about 60 per cent are fully fished.
Unreported and undetected ocean traffic also pose human rights, human trafficking and maritime border security issues.
Protection of our oceans relies on self-reporting by vessels – where they are from, what they are catching and whether they have the right to fish in their location. Dark vessels avoid detection to commit their crimes and are aided by a lack of a comprehensive detection system to locate them.
This project applies satellite monitoring, artificial intelligence, big data analytics and data visualization techniques such as virtual reality to recognize these vessels, blacklist them, and ultimately prosecute the owners to protect our global fisheries and marine ecosystems.