Huge fleets of Chinese fishing boats have been caught stealthily operating in North Korean waters—while having their tracking systems turned off. The potentially illegal fishing operation was revealed through a combination of artificial intelligence, radar and satellite data.
WIRED UK
This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.
A study published today in the journal Science Advances details how more than 900 vessels of Chinese origin (over 900 in 2017 and over 700 in 2018) likely caught more than 160,000 metric tons—close to half a billion dollars’ worth—of Pacific flying squid over two years. This may be in violation of United Nations sanctions, which began restricting North Korea from foreign fishing in September 2017 following the country’s ballistic missile tests.
Illegal fishing threatens fish stocks and maritime ecosystem, and can also jeopardize food security for legitimate fishers. However, the practice is difficult to monitor because of so-called “dark fleets,” or vessels that don’t appear on monitoring systems. Even if the vessels are operating legally and broadcasting their positions on the vessel monitoring systems mandated by their country, these locations are sometimes hidden from the public, limiting transparency and accountability.
In the study, scientists from South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the United States combined four different technologies to piece together information about the fleets, some of which may show up using one tool, but not another. These include, automatic identification system (AIS), radar images, infrared imaging and high resolution images.
AIS is a tracking system, much like GPS, that uses transponders to send the vessel’s location at sea. A ..
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