Indonesia refines 'God’s eye view’ of fishing

Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti have two things in common: they are famous for their strong role on the ship and both deeply in love with the fishy world of the ocean.

Their loves stories heated up amiably on Thursday at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly Hall — where the world’s policy makers in marine affairs were commemorating The World Oceans Days, with the Titanic movie star praising Susi for her latest not-a-movie acts against illegal fishing.

“Fisheries Minister Susi ramp up monitoring efforts and is leading the way to the new era of transparency in fisheries management by making Indonesia’s vessels monitoring system [VMS] data viable to the Global Fishing Watch [GFW] platform,” he said in a video remark played in the UN Ocean Conference.

With Susi’s move, Indonesia becomes the first nation ever to allow the public dissemination of their proprietary VMS data, revealing commercial fishing in vast areas of the ocean where it had previously been invisible to the public. “This is exactly the type of bolt and elevated leadership that we need more all around the world,” DiCaprio said.

The “God’s eye view of fishing activities” project, funded partly by the UN Messenger of Peace through his Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation, was built by American multinational technology company Google in cooperation with Oceana and SkyTruth.

It provides two version of monitoring information: the general information for the public and a more detailed one — including the identity of the ship and the tonnage — for the authority for law enforcement and legal purposes.

Susi’s decision makes significant contribution to elevate the quality of the GFW monitoring as it provides nearly 5,000 medium-sized commercial fishing vessels that are not required to carry the openly-broadcast Automatic Identification System (AIS), and are therefore not reliably track-able by any other means.

The inclusion in the GFW database reveals commercial fishing in vast areas of the ocean where it had previously been invisible, allowing DiCaprio’s platform to easily analyze — based on the vessel fishing behavior and movement — whether a ship is conducting a trawling, long line fishing, or just a normal fishing.

“Using the algorithms developed for AIS technology, GFW has been processing and analyzing Indonesian VMS data from 2014 to the present, and will continue to receive newly created Indonesian VMS Data daily. Detailed vessel behavior analysis is now displayed through the Global Fishing Watch public mapping platform,” said Skytruth data scientist AAron Roan.

AIS is a maritime navigation safety communications system which originally designed as a collision avoidance tool. While it provides detailed information for the industrial-sized commercial fishing activity throughout the oceans, there are limitations to adapting the technology for use in vessel monitoring, especially in areas of high vessel density where signal interference can cause drop-outs in coverage.

VMS, however, was designed specifically for use by governments to monitor and track vessels, and is required by all nations. It provides more consistent and reliable coverage than AIS and is required primarily on industrial-sized vessels — those exceeding 300 Gross Tonnage — whereas flag states generally have a lower size threshold for VMS usage.

Indonesia requires VMS on all vessels exceeding 30 Gross Tonnage, those averaging about 15 meters or more in-length, allowing GFW to conduct a more accurate tracking and vast monitoring coverage against fishing vessels’ activities on the oceans.

Talking to Indonesian journalists, Minister Susi expressed her expectation that all coastal nations would follow Indonesia’s decision, as the more countries to join then the more valid the global fishing monitoring system would be.

“It will give a deterrent effect to the perpetrators of illegal fishing and fish transshipment. They know that we set our eyes on them while they cruise in our vast ocean,” she said, adding that the public sharing of VMS data should be the global standard for transparency.

Indonesia’s example, with its vital position as the second largest wild-captured seafood producer in the world, has inspired other countries to jump into the project. This week, DiCaprio said, Peru had also expressed its commitment to jump into the bandwagon by providing their VMS data.

Google has also conducted dialogue with several countries such as Thailand and Taiwan but no commitment has been made, said Google Ocean program manager Bryan J. Sullivan.

In his closing statement, DiCaprio calls for more countries and more people to strengthen efforts to conserve the ocean for the sake of the future generation. “In this day, the World Oceans Day, ask yourself: what action can I take, what new bold commitment can I make to protect our blue planet before it’s absolutely too late,” he said.

"That exactly what makes me fall in love with him, rather than with Johnny Depp," said Susi who recently pictured on Indonesian meme showing her bad ass move for blowing up the trespassing pirate ship owned by Depp's movie character, Jack Sparrow.