[HN Gopher] AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint...
___________________________________________________________________
AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint of human
activity at sea
Author : geox
Score : 219 points
Date : 2024-01-04 12:39 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (globalfishingwatch.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (globalfishingwatch.org)
| belter wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856394
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Why aren't these things hit by pirates?
| andy99 wrote:
| Because they don't broadcast their position?
|
| I know nothing about the industry but I did wonder if an
| innocent excuse is that as a fishing vessel you wouldn't want
| to tell everyone else where you are fishing?
| Grazester wrote:
| I know while they are out there on their fishing grounds they
| don't always tell others where they are.
|
| I have several relatives that do fish. This includes long
| line tuna fishing and reef fishing.
| goosedragons wrote:
| They do claim that, although they should still share with the
| appropriate regulatory body where they were fishing. I know
| at least some of them there are rules about what can be done
| with fishers' data for exactly that reason.
|
| More likely they don't want to follow quota, rules about what
| they can or where they can fish.
| notahacker wrote:
| That often appears to be true in the _non_ -innocent sense
| that they stop telling everyone else where they're fishing
| somewhere near the edge of zones they're not allowed to fish
| in...
| bhickey wrote:
| Better yet: why aren't they treated as pirates?
| redblacktree wrote:
| The term would be poachers.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Because people like eating fish.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| This might surprise you, but: not at all costs, actually.
| moffkalast wrote:
| True, only for a reasonable cost. The kind of prices that
| responsible and renewable fishing probably can't match.
| danparsonson wrote:
| While that may be true in principle, it seems likely to
| me that price is a very important factor for many or even
| most people, so much so that they don't look too closely
| at provenance. Were that not the case then I would expect
| the market for battery chickens to have dried up by now,
| for example.
| aragonite wrote:
| Unless you live in the Maldives or Iceland:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_seafoo
| d_c...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| commercial fishing is subject to an extreme form of "size"
| competition that is hard to fathom! many documented cases,
| in many language groups
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's nobody patrolling the oceans.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| The US Navy would like a word.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You seem to have a serious misconception about either the
| US Navy or the oceans.
|
| There are actually satellites that do it. Over the course
| of many days. And it's not easy or quick to act on their
| feedback. Something like a military or police patrol
| simply can not happen.
| pc86 wrote:
| I mean it could, but it would be pretty expensive. We
| know generally where ships go to fish. You watch those
| areas and get an idea of the various ships, you stage
| your ships nearby and wait. If you're _really_ keen on
| being targeted you could follow ships back to port and
| over time have assets there wait to ID the individuals on
| the ship.
|
| The problem is this would cost millions of dollars and
| take weeks or months unless you got very lucky. The Navy
| could do it in their sleep but why would they? Nobody who
| cares enough about this problem has the means to execute
| it, and nobody with the means cares.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This isn't true at all. I worked for a long time on the
| first implementation of the Navy's Maritime Domain
| Awareness System and my wife currently works for the
| NRO's Enterprise Collection Orchestration system that
| auto-tasks orbital surveillance platforms in response to
| automatically detected global events. Many of the
| capabilities are classified, but I can assure the US Navy
| both knows about and has _some_ means to respond quickly
| (not necessarily by dispatching a manned vessel) to
| anything bigger than a driftwood log that appears on an
| Earth ocean.
|
| The reason they don't is the Navy is not a law
| enforcement agency and this is not their mission.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Sea shepherd does!
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I'm Commander Sea Shepherd, and this is my favorite post
| on YCombinator.
| bluescrn wrote:
| They're low value targets compared to a container ship or oil
| tanker.
| amelius wrote:
| This is also why small shops never get robbed, only big
| banks.
| munk-a wrote:
| Small shops _next_ to large banks almost never get robbed -
| convenience stores in a neighborhood that cops tend to
| ignore... that 's a different story. Most of the world's
| oceans are pretty thoroughly patrolled so if the risk is
| the same you might as well go after the bank.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| Container ships are attacked for ransom, not for the cargo.
| An owner of a small fishing vessel will not pay up
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Sea shepherd keep hitting them despite the condamnations. Kudos
| to them!
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20121220000930/http://www.afp.co...
| Throw839 wrote:
| Why do you thing "public view" is something good. And why should
| I expose myself to that pain?!
| sorokod wrote:
| Perhaps because "sunlight is the best disinfectant" -
| Transparency about the workings of an organization prevents
| corruption.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfec...
| Throw839 wrote:
| I do not work for goverment, I am fisherman!
| danparsonson wrote:
| So? That doesn't make you above the law, or guarantee that
| you will behave well. Even if you personally do all the
| right things, laws aren't written to satisfy individuals -
| there are plenty of fishing companies out there ruining the
| oceans.
| Throw839 wrote:
| Is goverment going to hire me, so I work for them? Where
| do I apply? Also I want gold medal for being a hero
| (minimum 130grams, 20carats), where is dispensery? I have
| several millions of heroes!!!!
| itishappy wrote:
| A corrupt one, from the sound of it.
| bratbag wrote:
| In this case?
|
| Because I want there to still be fish to eat in 20 years and
| enforced public view will make illegal overfishing harder.
| sfifs wrote:
| I imagine it's much easier to control on the trade side of
| things if governments really want to. Fish have to be brought
| relatively fresh to markets where there is demand.
| bjornbsm wrote:
| Depending on the species. There are factory ships, such as
| the name suggest have onboard factories that process the
| fish into filets, pack, freeze and stow the fish, enabling
| the vessels to stay longer out at sea - limited either by
| their cargo capacity or quota. Arguably this is good for
| the quality of the fish as well since it is frozen fresh.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Because if everyone has that attitude then we'll scour the
| ocean of all edible life. Leaving only a wasteland for possibly
| millions of years.
| Throw839 wrote:
| Fish do not work that way. If humans nuke themselfs, fish
| will recover in a few decades.
| munk-a wrote:
| A few decades is a long time - we overfished the grand
| banks to near extinction in the 90's and they still haven't
| recovered[1].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_n
| orth...
| Throw839 wrote:
| A few decades... Give it like 8
| magicalist wrote:
| Ah so the reasonable scenario is that things will be
| ruined for the lifetimes of almost everyone currently on
| earth. Not really that weird that some people would see
| that as a negative.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| There's no recovery from extinction, and extinction is on
| the table here.
| danparsonson wrote:
| If humans don't nuke themselves but keep fishing as they
| do, the fish will absolutely not recover. Fish aren't
| magic.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Imagine not wanting your competitors or rabid environmentalists
| knowing where you are.
| causal wrote:
| You don't need to be a "rabid environmentalist" to be alarmed
| by what is happening to our oceans:
|
| Ocean fish are being literally depleted, with bluefin tuna
| alone being down 97% from historical levels. [1]
|
| Commercial fleets use sonar to isolate and annihilate entire
| populations. Nets have been as wide as 50 miles, resulting in
| massive indiscriminate marine death as bycatch. Only 2.5km nets
| are legal now- still more than wide enough to result in a lot
| of bycatch, and there is no reason to assume these dark fleets
| are abiding by UN law. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/sea-
| runni...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_netting
| TrackerFF wrote:
| So this is something I work with directly, but for some other
| agency.
|
| First off, a big reason as to why - is because the laws differ
| from country to country. Some countries, like Norway for example,
| require shipping vessels over a certain length to broadcast their
| positions through AIS, VMS.
|
| This may not be the case for, say, UK.
|
| There are arguments to be had from both systems as to WHY you
| wouldn't want to broadcast your positions at all times - a
| typical one is that other could easily infer your fishing fields
| (fishing patterns are trivial, if you've worked with this you can
| easily spot what tools they are fishing with, and likely what
| species they are going for - don't need ML-based systems for
| that. Any fisher or fisheries analyst can spot the patterns), and
| thus go after that.
|
| The other is privacy.
|
| A very typical thing is that ships turn off their AIS as soon as
| they enter international waters. There is no enforcement of that,
| and many developed countries have practically zero resources to
| fight illegal fishing, from a technological point of view. UNDP
| has a program which is aimed at helping developing countries with
| the tech and training to detect illegal fishing, but there's a
| long way to go. Developing countries desperately need the data,
| which is either owned by governments, or private actors. AIS data
| is either picked up by satellites, or base stations. VMS systems
| are expensive, but also allow for ships to transfer catch reports
| and similar - but is unfortunately not always enforced in a good
| way.
|
| But tech is becoming better. Satellites with NAV/marine radar
| detectors are in orbit. Long-range drones with sensors are a
| thing. Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to
| have certain sensors on them. Lots of ML-assisted tools for
| automating detection and analysis is being introduced and used.
| stevehawk wrote:
| > The other is privacy.
|
| True in the aviation world. I've noticed that most people
| under, say, 50 or so, like ADS-B (airplanes broadcasting their
| location) for the safety reasons. But most of the pilots over
| 50 will say "It's just the government coming up with another
| way to track you."
| jMyles wrote:
| I'd love to hear a genuine argument from someone, of any age,
| who is anti-ADS-B.
|
| I don't understand the impetus to allow someone to fly a
| massive, deadly hunk of metal over a community without
| clarifying their telemetry to that community.
|
| I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law enforcement
| is now exempt from this requirement in some situations.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| > I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law
| enforcement is now exempt from this requirement in some
| situations.
|
| Black helo's off ads-b for the purposes of intimidation are
| totally a thing and I agree wholeheartedly.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Food for thought: what about driving a massive deadly hunk
| of metal through a community?
| vladms wrote:
| To progress in the same direction: what about having a
| static deadly hunk of metal at second floor of your
| house?
|
| The point I am trying to make: most of things flying seem
| more dangerous (higher speed, higher reach, different
| fuel) than cars.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > most of things flying seem more dangerous
|
| And yet somehow flying is safer than driving! As a
| sibling comment mentions, a lot of that has to do with
| all of the safety controls in place.
|
| _My_ point is that driving at modern speeds in modern
| vehicles is actually pretty dangerous, even if not as
| dangerous as aviation, and yet we as a society exercise
| very little oversight over the activity.
|
| There are good reasons to _not_ have "ADS-B for cars",
| mostly related to privacy. Unlike flying, many people
| heavily rely on cars to carry out their day-to-day
| activities. But I think it's at least worth thinking
| about.
| pc86 wrote:
| _Commercial aviation_ is safer than driving. General
| aviation is no safer than riding a motorcycle, and may be
| even more dangerous, so it is definitely not safer than
| driving. And the people complaining about ADS-B are going
| to be almost exclusively grumpy old guys flying around in
| J3 cubs.
| BoThrowAway wrote:
| Man, that discussion has been around for a long, long
| time- I'm a grumpy old guy that's been riding motorcycles
| of one type or another since I was 11, and flying since I
| was 16. Btw, I'm a huge fan of both ADS-B as well as
| TCAS... TCAS when I'm flying, ADS-B when I get to watch
| my son training at Navy Corpus.
|
| Hanging around FBOs/flight lines/bars with pilots that
| also ride, it's come down to this:
|
| After countless attempts and arguments while trying to
| normalize accident/fatal accident rates by converting
| hours flown/miles ridden, statistics do support that GA
| does seem to be a bit more dangerous than riding.
|
| That having been said, my opinion is that most of the GA
| risks are in the hands of the pilot, while most of the
| risks of riding are external to the rider. Most of the
| worst motorcycle accidents I've seen or heard of involved
| the rider getting schwacked by a car or truck, while most
| of the worst GA accidents involved the pilot schwacking
| him or herself with poor judgement and/or skills that are
| below MIF. I put a lot of effort into minimizing pilot-
| induced risk when I fly, so scientifically speaking and
| all, I -feel- safer when flying than riding, and probably
| am.
| jMyles wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, I'm a full-time cyclist, so you won't find
| a lot of car love from me. :-)
|
| But I do think there's a difference in risk. Aviation has
| a pretty dang good record, and I think that the tradition
| of transparency in comms and telemetry is a huge part of
| that.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Aviation has a pretty dang good record
|
| While this is true about commercial airliners it is not
| true for general aviation. The safety of general aviation
| is roughly comparable to motorbikes.
| jMyles wrote:
| Both general aviation and motorbikes have a track record
| (at least in relative terms) that's pretty good _with
| respect to injuring or killing third parties_, which I
| thought was the thrust of the inquiry.
| OJFord wrote:
| Well yeah, number plates?
| yreg wrote:
| I don't think that's comparable since there is no
| rideradar24 where you could check out every ride anyone
| takes with their car. Also, who owns which plate is not
| public information.
|
| I believe that plenty of people would object to that
| level of tracking citing privacy reasons.
|
| (I'm not against ADS-B myself.)
| pc86 wrote:
| There is no legitimate argument against ADS-B other than "I
| don't wanna." Not to say that that isn't legitimate and
| doesn't at least deserve a discussion, but that's really
| it. There's really no Constitutional or statutory argument
| against requiring ADS-B.
| forward1 wrote:
| > There's really no Constitutional or statutory argument
| against requiring ADS-B.
|
| You could argue it's not a very good one, but it does
| exist:
|
| "This rulemaking provides an exception to ADS-B
| requirements, removing the transmission requirement for
| sensitive operations conducted by Federal, State and
| local government entities in matters of national defense,
| homeland security, intelligence and law enforcement."
|
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-07-18/pdf/201
| 9-1...
| pc86 wrote:
| Yeah I probably wasn't clear in that I meant I'm not
| aware of any legal basis for saying that requiring ADS-B
| for private/commercial air traffic is wrong. For example
| operating a 172 is not a constitutional right so tracking
| you while you do isn't isn't necessarily a violation of
| any particular right.
|
| I think it's wrong that the government exempts themselves
| from it if they're going to require it of everyone else,
| but that's so far down my list of grievances with the
| government it's barely worth thinking about :)
| giantg2 wrote:
| The only thing I can think of is for individuals who have
| credible threats against them. It could be easy enough to
| delay the relay of that information to the general public
| by 24hrs or something so that the data is available but
| poses less use to potential threat actors.
| stavros wrote:
| How are you going to delay the relay when anyone with a
| receiver can just receive and relay the data?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Hammer down on the aggregators, nothing easier than that.
| stavros wrote:
| Is it as easy as shutting down piracy sites?
| ericbarrett wrote:
| There's some yahoo who buzzes my house twice a week in a
| Cessna (coming and going). He's often under 500' AGL. No
| ADS-B and haven't gotten a tail number yet. I think it should
| be illegal to not have it enabled, for exactly this kind of
| thing.
|
| In fact I wonder if it's even a licensed pilot--William
| Bushling apparently flew for 20 years without a current FAA
| license and also didn't use ADS-B; when he finally lost the
| dice game it took them days to find the wreckage:
| https://youtu.be/69NvK6YbNtg
| peterleiser wrote:
| Try contacting local small airports for information. Also,
| flight plans are apparently public record and available
| upon request.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Flight plans are not required if you're just out flying
| VFR. Someone who doesn't like ADS-B probably also doesn't
| call uncle sam and tell him where he plans to fly.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Have you tried a super long telephoto lens? If you got like
| 100 photos in a row you might be able to use some kind of
| software to blend them and infer the number.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| It's only been a couple times a week on random days and
| times; I'd basically have to camp on my roof to catch
| them. And they're going full tilt (at least 90 knots) so
| there's only 5-10 seconds of opportunity. I do have a
| pretty good long lens on my digital camera, maybe I'll
| set it up and have it by the door.
| callalex wrote:
| Start writing down the exact time of the events, that way
| you can piece it together without having to sprint outside
| with binoculars.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| Do you have your own ADS-B receiver or how do you know it
| doesn't have ADS-B?
| cronix wrote:
| You can track them with sites like FlightAware or
| FlightRadar24. Just zoom in to where your house is. Click
| on a plane. If it's not on the map, it likely isn't
| broadcasting ADSB
|
| https://www.flightaware.com/
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com
| ericbarrett wrote:
| They aren't visible on these sites, first thing I
| checked. Maybe they've requested delisting but I think
| they're just not broadcasting--specifically to avoid
| consequences of their reckless flying.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| As others have noted these commercial services don't show
| every plane, the owners of planes may request to hide
| their planes there, that's why I asked how you can be
| sure.
|
| Other sites like https://globe.adsbexchange.com or
| https://globe.adsb.fi don't filter aircrafts, they even
| show military planes (well, if they have ADS-B enabled).
| Though they don't have coverage above oceans, as
| satellite ads-b is expensive. (These sites look nearly
| the same, as they both use tar1090 as the webui, but they
| may have different coverage)
|
| These sites, may sometimes have less coverage, as the
| sites you mentioned are way more popular. But if your
| area has coverage by these sites, you can be sure that
| you'll see every plane if it has ADS-B.
|
| You could even replay, if you know the time and date when
| the plane passed, by appending ?replay to the URL.
|
| e.g. https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?replay
| netsharc wrote:
| Laser pointers mounted on auto-aiming platforms,
| connected to the ADS-B servers.. no ADS-B data? Aim,
| fire!
| callalex wrote:
| ADSBExchange is more complete (at least in my area).
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _But most of the pilots over 50 will say "It's just the
| government coming up with another way to track you."_
|
| Not wrong, but the tracking is to help with reducing
| collisions.
|
| That said:
|
| *
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy
|
| You need to go with 1090ES(-only), and not the 'consumer
| focused' UAT, though.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > unfortunately not always enforced in a good way
|
| guess there is the corruption issue?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Since I've observed a bunch of countries directly, it is more
| the following:
|
| - Fisheries may not (historically or present day) be a huge
| part of their economy, and has therefore been neglected for
| years.
|
| - Not enough infrastructure due to economic neglect.
|
| - Huge revolving door of officials. One month you deal with
| one person, six months its another one. You don't know if
| they are real professionals, or someone placed there (party
| stooge, nepotism, you name it).
|
| - No cooperation between fisheries/marine agencies, and
| navy/police/coastal guard.
|
| - And, yes, some corruption I'd assume.
|
| I have a concrete example:
|
| We were invited to a developing country to assess their
| systems, and consult them on how to move forward. They
| were/are losing millions and millions due to illegal
| trawling.
|
| Arrive at the HQ, which was a run down office where a handful
| of people were working. All data was shared via excel
| spreadsheets, no real systems to work on, lots of paper forms
| that someone had to digitize. Someone looking at
| MarineTraffic from time to time.
|
| That's the state of some of these countries.
|
| The illegal fishers are long out of their EEZ before anyone
| can react.
| londons_explore wrote:
| >All data was shared via excel spreadsheets, no real
| systems to work on, lots of paper forms
|
| This can be very efficient _if_ you spot check people from
| time to time, and simply cut the hands off of anyone found
| to be violating the law.
|
| Tell people to calculate and pay their own taxes too, with
| the same punishment if they falsify stuff.
|
| That's how Afghanistan dealt with opium farmers before
| 2001, and it was amazingly effective.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| certainly there is a place for medieval law enforcement
| in this day and age
|
| however, one (of many) problems is that _the poachers
| make more money than the employed bureaucrats_ .. step 2
| - follow the money
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Then it seems to be a political/societal issue not unique
| to fisheries?
| notahacker wrote:
| (Also worked on this area for a bit)
|
| There are EU regulations requiring fishing vessels over 15m to
| use AIS (the UK also abides by these) so within Europe the
| standards are reasonably consistent. Regulations are
| considerably more relaxed or less effectively enforced in other
| jurisdictions which is reflected in the data; it's possible the
| 98% of all fishing vessels operating off Thailand without AIS
| are all legal. But given the reputation of larger vessels
| operating in that region for slavery, perhaps not.
|
| Agree there are privacy-related reasons why you might ideally
| not want competing vessels seeing which waters you fish, but
| AIS alone doesn't tell anyone whether it's any better than
| other waters (and fishermen have no shortage of other data
| points to plan their activity or other boats to follow if they
| really don't have any better heuristics). Regulatory evasion is
| rife even in effectively-regulated areas not least because the
| industry is convinced some of the regulations are actually
| wrong, especially when it comes to localised quotas. You knows
| there's an issue when a former operator of a commercial fleet
| in Europe tells you candidly, that their skippers (who are all
| tracked by AIS/VMS) would definitely expect any catch logging
| system to allow them to lie about which points on their voyage
| yielded most of the fish....
| bjornbsm wrote:
| I have worked with some catch logging data, and there is
| certainly some weird stuff in some of the data that points to
| something like that (but super interesting to untangle and
| figure out, from a personal perspective). It really is a game
| of finding clear, understandable regulations, but at the same
| time put a lot of work into checking whether they are upheld.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Satellites with NAV/marine radar detectors are in orbit.
|
| Ya, they are called spy sats. For the better part of a century,
| very smart people have been funded by people with very deep
| pockets to track ships at sea that don't want to be tracked. If
| anyone thinks their startup sat company is going to start
| tracking ships with passive radar, they are entering a very
| very mature field.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ocean_Surveillance_Syste...
|
| >> The Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) is a series of
| signals-intelligence satellites that have conducted electronic
| signals intelligence for the U.S. Navy since the early
| 1970s.[1] The first series of satellites were codenamed "White
| Cloud" or "PARCAE", while second- and third-generation
| satellites have used the codenames "Ranger" and "Intruder".
|
| And for anyone saying "well, our sats are going to be in lower
| orbit" ... that has been done too. If you ever read about
| satellites powered by nuclear reactors, those were low-orbit
| radar sats looking for ships.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Mature yet commercially opaque I assume? That seems like a
| good business model tbh, an existing bench of talent (likely
| under paid) and an established science and technology, that's
| of broad interest to many companies, NGOs, and governments.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| This is essentially Hawkeye360's business model and to a
| lesser extent Aurora Insight. Both are satellite based
| analytics of RF signals. Hawkeye360 specifically lists
| Maritime Domain Awareness as one of their focuses:
|
| https://www.he360.com/solutions/maritime-domain-awareness/
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to have
| certain sensors on them.
|
| Yeah but as long as no one dares to stand up to the worst
| offenders - particularly China, who have been under fire for
| years from their neighborhood in the Philippines [3] all the
| way to Africa [1][2] - with actual navies to stop and either
| seize or sink non-compliant ships all of this will be in vain.
|
| The open sea is the last remaining place on Earth where
| darwinism in its purest form still rules. Might makes right...
|
| [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-
| people...
|
| [2] https://www.voanews.com/a/fishy-business-report-details-
| chin...
|
| [3] https://apnews.com/article/china-canada-philippines-
| illegal-...
| kozikow wrote:
| I'm more interested how those geospatial visualization were done.
| Do you know a probable library used for it?
| seanf wrote:
| Found this in the acknowledgement section of the article:
| https://github.com/GlobalFishingWatch/pyseas
|
| Edit: cool examples here
| https://github.com/GlobalFishingWatch/pyseas/blob/master/pys...
| haltist wrote:
| Fish stock will collapse in my lifetime.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Hope not
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| if commercial fishing continues like this it's a "when" not
| an "if," the fish population of the ocean is estimated to be
| half of what it was in 1970... some species are down more
| than 80%
| TomK32 wrote:
| Let's call the largest operator of illegal fishing boats by its
| name: China > This Chinese fleet is also
| categorized by The Global Initiative Against Transnational
| Organized Crime as the largest purveyor of illegal fishing in the
| world. Our reporting revealed Chinese vessels illegally entering
| the waters of other countries, disabling locational transponders
| in violation of Chinese law, breaking U.N. sanctions that
| prohibit foreigners fishing in North Korean waters, transmitting
| dual identities (or "spoofing"), finning of protected shark
| species, fishing without a license, and using prohibited gear.
|
| https://time.com/6328528/investigation-chinese-fishing-fleet...
| axus wrote:
| Are these organized by some large state-run company, or is it a
| bunch of independent businesses exploiting the lack of
| enforcement?
| 93po wrote:
| Seems like it'd be hard for anyone to say with confidence
| given that we're only just now learning of the scale of their
| existence
| ChatGTP wrote:
| This is definitely not the first I've heard of it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| An operation of this scale likely involves tens of
| thousands of people. Those people have families, are paid
| salaries, have grievances, etc.
|
| In fact, bet a few of them are here on HN right now and
| could probably give us a first hand account while on the
| high seas trying to browse the only bit of the internet
| that still works with a 32kbps high latency internet
| connection...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Nah, they just use their Starlink connections
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Red-Star Link
| asylteltine wrote:
| What's the difference? China is responsible either way
| realusername wrote:
| There aren't many large scale things happening in China
| without the state behind it and that's also the case here.
| The vessels are heavily subsidied.
| anjel wrote:
| The crux is: People require protein, daily. Feeding a
| population of 1.5 billion people requires quite a a lot of
| protein. Nothing leads more directly to civil unrest than
| hunger and famine.
| zzleeper wrote:
| That doesn't justify China for going all the way across the
| ocean to illegally fish on Chilean/Peruvian/Ecuador waters
| proc0 wrote:
| I don't know anything about this particular issue, but
| generally from what I recall, Chinese companies are
| effectively the CCP by their own admission. They have full
| control.
| causal wrote:
| This article also highlights the human-trafficking happening on
| these illegal fleets. Disturbing intersection of inhumane
| practices.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Slavery, presumably?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Apparently the vast majority of crews on normal legal
| global logistics shipping vessels are Phillipino. I wonder
| how many of the Chinese shark-murder slaver vessels are
| too.
| TomK32 wrote:
| The Global Slavery Index has estimates and as the article
| about China's fleets mentions North Korea, that hellish pit
| is obviously on #1 with >10% of the population in modern
| slavery https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-
| index/methodology/me...
| guyomes wrote:
| The Association for Professional Observers maintains a list
| of observer deaths and disappearances [1] that is also
| disturbing.
|
| [1]: https://www.apo-observers.org/observer-safety/misses/
| pc86 wrote:
| Isn't illegally entering another country's territory an act of
| war?
|
| Sink the boats, problem solved. Presumably another, much
| larger, problem will be created. But the illegal fishing might
| stop.
| FpUser wrote:
| Yeah, let's cut the arm out so the finger does not itch
| callalex wrote:
| It would only take a few examples to change behavior.
| ActionHank wrote:
| They often target countries that are not able to effectively
| police or defend their waters.
| pintxo wrote:
| The ocean is so vast, few, if any, countries are able to
| monitor, let alone defend, their share of it at all times.
| Sanzig wrote:
| It's illegal fishing, not a ballistic missile submarine.
| Nobody needs to die over this.
|
| Send in the coast guard, impound the ship, assess big fines.
| If the fines go unpaid, sell the ship.
| golergka wrote:
| Unless you're able to impound a significant % of their
| fleet, their profits would still cover the losses and this
| wouldn't serve as an effective deterrent. Sinking the ship,
| on the other hand, would make the crews really uneasy about
| going into your coastal waters. People don't weigh
| probability of dying against a survivability of the whole
| fleet.
| kersplody wrote:
| Not that simple: Most of these Chinese fishing boats are
| classified as Chinese Merchant Marines, a devision of the
| Chinese Military, so sinking them is an act of war. This is a
| real headache for managing illegal Chinese Fishing of Vietnam
| waters and other countries within the 9 and 11 dashed lines.
| aragonite wrote:
| Worth mentioning that the same cited report identifies South
| Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine as #3, #6, #7 global worst offenders.
|
| https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IUU-...
|
| For flag state responsibility (Table 16), Taiwan (#2), South
| Korea (#4), Japan (#6), Spain (#7) are also among top-10 global
| worst offenders.
|
| https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IUU-...
| erentz wrote:
| Don't skip some and introduce your bias.
|
| 1 China 2 Russia 3 South Korea 4 Somalia 5 Yemen 6 Taiwan 7
| Ukraine 8 Eritrean 9 Egypt 10 Lybia
| aragonite wrote:
| I linked directly to the pages in the report containing the
| very tables you've copy-pasted. It's literally one click
| away.
|
| In case it's not obvious, the entire point is that the
| actual statistics is not very convenient for the "good-guy
| v. bad-guy" framing. Why else would I only highlight
| countries considered in the US as part of the "good guys"
| camp?
|
| While we're on this topic, US's own ranking drastically
| worsened between 2019 and 2021, from being #66 worst
| globally (see p.121) to #27 worst (see p. 111):
|
| > When considering prevalence, five countries - South
| Korea, Seychelles, the USA, Senegal and Saint Vincent & the
| Grenadines - entered the list of worst-performing countries
| in 2021 for the first time, with China, Taiwan, Vietnam,
| Thailand and Ecuador remaining in the worst performers.
| (p.28)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It is worth noting the ranking is also weighted, and China
| consistently weights 25-30-% worse than #2 in each table.
| (For some reason your deep linking isn't bringing me to the
| tables you're referring to so not sure which specifically
| you're referring to).
|
| But you're right - _everyone_ is screwing the planet up in
| their own messed up ways. I think rather than making bogey
| men out of the "bad guys," we should realize this fact. But
| with that fact realized, China does act with a particularly
| egregious lack of responsibility and accountability that
| belies their stature.
| aragonite wrote:
| > China consistently weights 25-30-% worse than #2 in each
| table
|
| I agree with your larger point, but I'm not sure this is
| entirely accurate. If you look at table 4 on p. 32 (i.e.
| _printed_ page number; PDF page number is 21, and the
| complete data can be found at the end of the PDF, starting
| on (printed page number) p. 110), you 'll see that the
| scores are derived from three indicators: (i) the
| _prevalence_ of IUU (Illegal, unreported, and unregulated)
| fishing, (ii) each country 's _vulnerability_ to IUU
| fishing, and (iii) their _response_ to it. Only in the
| Prevalence table for 2021 does China "weight 25-30% worse"
| than #2 (South Korea). In the Vulnerability table, China's
| score is only marginally worse (3.3-5%) than Japan, the
| second-worst in both 2019 and 2021. In the Response table,
| China (3.31) is not even among the top 10 worst countries,
| scoring comparably to Israel (3.29) and better than
| Singapore (3.87) and UAE (3.82).
|
| Also worth noting: the Prevalence score is calculated based
| on the _number_ of vessels recorded on IUU lists (see
| p.12), so we 'd expect countries with a larger number of
| fishing vessells to score higher (i.e. worse) in respect of
| Prevalence, which is why even the US made it to #8 worst in
| the Prevalence table for 2021.
|
| > For some reason your deep linking isn't bringing me to
| the tables you're referring to
|
| I don't have the machine to test this right now, but it's
| possible that the ?page=N search parameter trick only works
| in Chromium.
| lupusreal wrote:
| About time coast guards start sinking these bastards on sight.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Big ships burn bunker fuel which is high in sulphur. So much so,
| that the shipping lanes are visible on a world map of SO2
| concentration:
|
| https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/ani...
| IKantRead wrote:
| Which is fascinating because sulphur emissions counteract (mask
| might be a better term) global warming. Reduction in sulphur
| emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this
| years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this
| year.
|
| Wild when you see just how much emissions are still being
| released and still presumably cooling the Earth, meaning the
| effects of climate change we're seeing now are still likely a
| dampened version of the true long term impact.
| dgellow wrote:
| Sulphur dioxide is also a threat to life (humans, animals,
| and plants) and can result in acid rains
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I recall there was a major push against Acid Rain in the
| 70s-90s. If SO2 emissions were effectively regulated in
| that period (easy to do because "acid" is scary) then what
| magnitude of impact did that have on our post-90s warming?
| IKantRead wrote:
| To be clear, I'm absolutely not promoting increased sulphur
| emissions as a solution to our climate problems. Moreso
| pointing out that all those emissions are potentially
| masking the true severity of our current predicament.
| userbinator wrote:
| It also gets released naturally in copious amounts from
| volcanic eruptions.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of
| the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-
| surface /land temperature this year._
|
| Was there an outright study of the "main culprits" part of
| this? As I recall there was some evidence but then the main
| discourse was based on a lot of extrapolation by a viral
| tweet.
| IKantRead wrote:
| Not to my knowledge, which is why I used the word
| "suspected" since I think this falls on the "makes
| intuitive sense, but would not surprise me in the least if
| it turned out to be completely incorrect" category of
| hypotheses.
|
| I consider "suspected" to be the least level of evidence
| while still taking something into consideration as a
| potential cause. A suspected murderer might not even have
| been arrested, let alone convicted.
|
| We do know that sulphur emissions have a global cooling
| effect, and we do know that sulphur emissions recently were
| reduced, so it's a reasonable hypothesis from first
| principles.
| huytersd wrote:
| So another poisonous emission was partially offsetting the
| effects of other harmful emissions.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Big ships burn bunker fuel which is high in sulphur._
|
| Starting in 2020 there's a limit:
|
| *
| https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/pages/02-I...
| gavin_gee wrote:
| thats a great map, but let's be honest just look at China and
| India. that seems priority 1 to solve
| asylteltine wrote:
| China! I can't believe it! Why aren't there actual consequences
| for this? The world needs to have harsher sanctions to China
| before it's too late. If China becomes self sufficient, global
| civilization is literally over.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| OK, you first. Stop buying stuff made in China, that is pretty
| much all the stuff apart from some food.
| consumer451 wrote:
| It ain't easy, but it's not as absolutely impossible as you
| make it sound.
|
| And thanks to multiple factors, it's becoming easier by the
| day.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/
| aragonite wrote:
| Looks like activity in that subreddit has died down quite a
| bit from the mid-2020 highs:
|
| https://subredditstats.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/#:~:text=
| c...
| consumer451 wrote:
| Sure, but:
|
| > The data shows that factories are producing less and
| hiring fewer people," said Dan Wang, chief economist at
| Hang Seng Bank China. "(The data) could also show a loss
| of confidence in government policy," she added, warning
| factory activity was unlikely to improve anytime soon as
| other economic problems dominate. [0]
|
| > A growing number of companies are looking to move their
| manufacturing out of China. Companies are examining their
| heavy concentration in China. Boards and companies are
| reevaluating their risks and reviewing mitigation
| strategies. [1]
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-factory-
| activity-...
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/betsyatkins/2023/08/07/m
| anufact...
| asylteltine wrote:
| Oh no I guess no one should do anything!
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| So again, go ahead and do your bit first. Of course you
| won't because you don't want to cause yourself even a minor
| inconvenience.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>"...vessels absent from public monitoring systems, often termed
| "dark fleets," pose major challenges for protecting and managing
| natural resources. Researchers found numerous dark fishing
| vessels inside many marine protected areas, and a high
| concentration of vessels in many countries' waters that
| previously showed little-to-no vessel activity by public
| monitoring systems."
|
| Seems like a really good application for Jerry Pournelle's "Rods
| From God kinetic weapons concept[0].
|
| Trying to make protected marine animals disappear? You might just
| disappear.
|
| (Zero sympathy for any kind of poaching; we're making ecosystems
| go extinct fast enough)
|
| [0] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/rods-god-strange-
| su...
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Currently working in this space on orbital sensor systems, there
| are about to be a lot of fun ways to hunt these dark vessels and
| ID them/track them back to their ports. For instance, there are
| already small satellite constellations that can geo-locate and
| profile them based on their other RF emissions aside from AIS.
| The space is also heating up rapidly as this is becoming a
| national defense priority for a number of different countries
| that don't want to deal with illegal fishing among a host of
| other issues that anonymous vessels near their shores present.
| bjornbsm wrote:
| This is really interesting, du you mind maybe sharing some
| names of companies or research papers here? I am working with
| this topic myself in my phd, however more from the AIS
| perspective. While AIS is a great data source it is indeed easy
| to fool, all these initiatives to illuminate the dark spots are
| very interesting.
| justinl33 wrote:
| > _By synthesizing GPS data with five years of radar and optical
| imagery, the researchers were able to identify vessels that
| failed to broadcast their positions. Using machine learning, they
| then concluded which of those vessels were likely engaged in
| fishing activity._
|
| What is the actual ML behind this?
| bjornbsm wrote:
| The ML behind this is most probably building on the work of
| Kroodsma et. al (2018) [1]. (Kroodsma is affiliated with Global
| Fishing Watch). While AIS data can contain information about
| whether a ship is engaged in fishing, this is sparsely used -
| even though there is no ill intent. By using spatio-temporal
| data such as position and speed, and expert labelled segments
| of activities they trained CNN's to identify fishing activity
| from other activities. Since these are vessels that did not
| broadcast their positions, i.e did not broadcast AIS data my
| guess is that they used the optical imagery to construct
| movement patterns, maybe even speeds (by looking at the wake
| patterns) as well as their position in general as input data to
| similar constructed CNN's. They could also put in info such as
| whether the ship was in or near fishing grounds, and whether
| the ship showed signs to travel to port to offload any catch,
| or met up with a vessel to transfer the catch.
|
| I'm currently in the middle of my phd where I am working with
| these types of data and methods, its extremely interesting.
|
| [1] David A. Kroodsma et al. ,Tracking the global footprint of
| fisheries.Science359,904-908(2018).DOI:10.1126/science.aao5646
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aao5646
| lumb63 wrote:
| I can't help but wonder about the privacy implications of tech
| like this. I'm no fishing vessel, but I'm not that much smaller
| than some fishing vessels. Certainly my car is of comparable
| size. How long is it before humans can be tracked in, or out of,
| their cars, by anyone with a sufficiently adept satellite? That
| question also implies it isn't already happening.
| bjornbsm wrote:
| As it is in Norway this is an ongoing debate - where the
| smaller fishing vessels have been exempt from having the
| mandatory AIS equipment, citing privacy as some of the reasons.
| In the government portal for showing AIS data they do not show
| data of ships that is below 45m length to preserve their
| privacy. However larger fishing vessels have large crews
| depending on the mode of fishing, so it becomes less a case of
| tracking single persons (and maybe in the fishermen more a case
| of tracking commercial competitors).
| wetmore wrote:
| Pretty sure this can already happen.
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