Global Fishing Watch, Skytruth Warn Of Vessels Falsifying Coordinates

Nonprofit organizations Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and SkyTruth have reported that vessels on the world’s oceans may be using constantly improving technology to falsify and scramble their automatic identification system (AIS) coordinates, potentially carrying out illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing through the use of such technology. This has been brought to light through a recent study that revealed a high percentage of untracked industrial fishing vessels and transport and energy vessels. Efforts to systematically detect false AIS broadcasts on a global scale have resulted in the discovery of a Russian-flagged tanker vessel, Kapitan Schemilkin, transmitting false positions on at least two separate occasions.