Global Fishing Watch set out to achieve transparency — but did it?

In 2016, a platform aimed at using data to drive transparency and supply chain accountability in the notoriously opaque fisheries sector was launched by Google, Oceana, and SkyTruth. Global Fishing Watch would share vessels’ publicly broadcast location data and sought to bring in governments’ proprietary data too, announcing its first partnerships with Indonesia in 2017 and Peru a year later. From the start, GFW attracted donor funding: $10.3 million at launch — $6 million of which came from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation — with other support from the Marisla Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Wyss Foundation, The Waterloo Foundation, and Adessium Foundation. John Amos, the founder of SkyTruth, even said GFW would “improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the planet.” But nearly six years later, the results have been mixed. GFW says Indonesia stopped sharing vessels’ location data in 2020. And while the platform has been used by academics, international groups, and others, it’s unclear whether illegal, unreported, and unregulated — or IUU — fishing is any less of a problem now compared with 2016. Moreover, GFW has not been able to address other issues — including geopolitical and security concerns, particularly in the South China Sea. This limits the impact on countries such as China, whose fishing fleets are largely responsible for IUU fishing. The platform has also failed to get China to share data or act on GFW’s findings. “Technology is a key part of the jigsaw, but really it’s just a part. It has to be integrated with a lot of other considerations for an effective strategy against IUU,” Peter Horn, a project director for the international fisheries program at The Pew Charitable Trusts, told Devex. From data to action One of GFW's initial focus areas was the South China Sea, which is considered one of the most productive fishing areas in the world, with its catches valued at $15.4 billion annually. But the sea is severely threatened by overfishing, with stocks rapidly declining. “When you talk to governments, transparency may not be the social norm for fisheries management, so we have to gradually show the benefits and showcase collaboration.” --— Hoki Lo, senior program manager for Asia, Global Fishing Watch At first, Indonesia proved to be a willing partner and, it was hoped, a model for other nations. GFW data helped facilitate Indonesia’s controversial boat destruction policy, in which illegal foreign fishing vessels were captured and destroyed. According to research, this resulted in a drop for commercial fishing in Indonesian waters. “Global Fishing Watch provided regular analysis … and information of IUU threats that can be used by the law enforcement, either to board and inspect, or operation planning purposes,” Fadilla Octaviani, director for enforcement support at the nonprofit Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative, told Devex via email. Octaviani provided the example of GFW reporting a Chinese vessel in the Timor Sea in 2017, allowing the Indonesian government to intercept and apprehend it. Another example was the seizure of MV NIKA, a vessel wanted in several jurisdictions, in 2019. GFW saw a major setback when Indonesia ended its data-sharing partnership after the country’s 2019 general elections. Moreover, the hopes that other nations around the South China Sea would also participate and share data have yet to come to fruition. Far from its early promise, GFW’s work increasingly involves the slow process of educating stakeholders about the importance of transparency and data sharing. “When you talk to governments, transparency may not be the social norm for fisheries management, so we have to gradually show the benefits and showcase collaboration,” said Hoki Lo, senior program manager for Asia at GFW, adding that "it can’t be achieved immediately, especially in this region.” According to Lo, GFW has been able to provide governments and regional fisheries management organizations — the multilateral entities that manage fishery resources in a particular region of international water — with verifiable data on IUU fishing in Asia. GFW aims to point out areas that deserve more attention, as well as “what could be achieved by joint collaboration,” said Lo. Fishing geopolitics and policy GFW and others in the sector often focus on the environmental and biodiversity aspects of IUU fishing, but there are security and geopolitical concerns as well. This is especially true in the South China Sea, where China claims vast maritime rights. Its claim extends into neighboring nations’ “exclusive economic zones,” in which states are supposed to have jurisdiction over marine resources. According to Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, this means that fishing is often of secondary importance for China’s fleets. “They are there to show China’s presence and make life difficult for China’s neighbors,” Poling said. “So China is not going to pull them back just because of bad attention.” This also limits China’s willingness to cooperate in regional management, as it sees its actions as taking place in its territorial waters. According to Horn, while they haven’t solved everything, tools like GFW and technology have played a major role in raising awareness of IUU fishing and making it a bigger issue at the global stage. “Tech has been brilliant in raising the profile of the issue, because this is something that is out of sight, and out of mind,” said Horn. “It also is allowing us to understand the interactions, because when people are stealing fish, they’re actually exploiting the vulnerable, whether that be a country, a people, or species.” This, in turn, has increased political pressure globally, which has led to several major efforts underway to increase global governance. Negotiations on a new High Seas Treaty, which would build on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, are ongoing, and marine protection is a focus. There’s also the Port State Measures Agreement, or PSMA, which would be the first binding international agreement to specifically target IUU fishing. It would make it impossible for vessels engaged in IUU activities, potentially traced by GFW or other remote monitoring tools, to offload their catch at any port in a treaty country. However, PSMA can only function as intended if all nations with major fishing ports join, otherwise, IUU fishing vessels could just go to non-treaty ports and offload their catch. So far, most major countries are participating, including the United States, Japan, Indonesia, and Vietnam. But not China, the world’s top consumer of seafood and the country ranked top in the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s IUU Fishing Index. “[We] could get to a place pretty soon where if you are an illegal fisher, you will have nearly nowhere to go to unload your catch,” said Poling, adding that “China is not yet a party," and it's concerning that they may not participate. It shows the limit of both technology and policy, if key actors refuse to participate. For Horn, the future of healthy fisheries depends on what we do with the increased knowledge we have on IUU fishing. “Platforms like Global Fishing Watch have massively improved,” said Horn. ”But we still have a long way to go. The question is whether there is the political will to act on that information and hold people to account when they have transgressed.”