There are thousands of ships sailing the seas to catch the fish you eat, and now you can watch them sail the ocean in almost real-time on this interactive map
The Global Fishing Watch map is a combined effort from Oceana, Google and Skywatch. It keeps track of over 35,000 fishing ships using a combination of satellite images and the ships’ own broadcast data. The tracking data begins in 2012, but continues updating so that you can see ships moving across the map as recently as three days ago.
Oceana says that this updating tracking data could be used to both reduce incidents of seafood fraud and to track vessels that are engaging in overfishing or hitting prohibited areas. The map’s real impact of overfishing may be a little less of a direct line, though. Showing just how heavily our waters are being fished, and how much it’s happening right in our own neighbourhoods might encourage people to choose more sustainable varieties of seafood, or at least, to be a little more wary of where they come from.
You can check out the map for yourself right here.