Illuminating dark fishing fleets in North Korea

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing threatens resource sustainability and equity. A major challenge with such activity is that most fishing vessels do not broadcast their positions and are "dark" in public monitoring systems. Combining four satellite technologies, we identify wide...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science advances Vol. 6; no. 30; p. eabb1197
Main Authors: Park, Jaeyoon, Lee, Jungsam, Seto, Katherine, Hochberg, Timothy, Wong, Brian A, Miller, Nathan A, Takasaki, Kenji, Kubota, Hiroshi, Oozeki, Yoshioki, Doshi, Sejal, Midzik, Maya, Hanich, Quentin, Sullivan, Brian, Woods, Paul, Kroodsma, David A
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 01-07-2020
Subjects:
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing threatens resource sustainability and equity. A major challenge with such activity is that most fishing vessels do not broadcast their positions and are "dark" in public monitoring systems. Combining four satellite technologies, we identify widespread illegal fishing by dark fleets in the waters between the Koreas, Japan, and Russia. We find >900 vessels of Chinese origin in 2017 and >700 in 2018 fished illegally in North Korean waters, catching an estimated amount of approximating that of Japan and South Korea combined (>164,000 metric tons worth >$440 million). We further find ~3000 small-scale North Korean vessels fished, mostly illegally, in Russian waters. These results can inform independent oversight of transboundary fisheries and foreshadow a new era in satellite monitoring of fisheries.
Bibliography:These authors contributed equally to this work.
ISSN:2375-2548
2375-2548
DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abb1197