Researchers track commercial fishing worldwide in near real-time

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The global fishing fleet is so big it can be seen from space. Really.

Fishing activity now covers at least 55 percent of the world's oceans—four times the land area covered by agriculture—and can now be monitored, in near real time, to the level of individual vessels. In fact, 70,000 vessels of the global fishing fleet traveled 460 million kilometers in 2016, equivalent to traveling to the moon and back 600 times.

Using satellite tracking, machine learning and common ship-tracking technology, scientists from UC Santa Barbara teamed up with colleagues at Global Fishing Watch, National Geographic Society's Pristine Sea project, Dalhousie University, SkyTruth, Google and Stanford University to illuminate the extent of global fishing—down to single vessel movements and hourly activity. Their findings appear in the journal Science.