Video: Big Brother map instantly spots illegal fishing

Big Brother is now watching fishing fleets. A giant map of the world displayed on a video wall can instantly detect if fish are being stolen from the ocean.

Developed by Satellite Applications Catapult in the UK and The Pew Charitable Trusts, the technology cost £1 million to build and displays the location of large fishing vessels on top of satellite images combined with a topographical map of the ocean floor. Ships, which are tracked by transponder, are represented by glowing blue dots.


Although it is against the law to switch off the tracking device, a vessel may do so to fish illegally in a protected area, causing it to vanish from the display. The disappearance sends an alert to the system in 18 milliseconds, whereas previously it took a team of analysts up to 18 hours to pick up on a suspicious ship.

Displaying features of the ocean floor helps determine the type of fish in a given area, which can be cross-referenced with the species a vessel’s fishing licence permits it to catch.

Illegal and unreported fishing is rampant, amounting to about $23.5 billion a year. Up to 9000 kilograms of seafood is stolen from the ocean every second.