It's Not a "Person," But It Has Eagle Eyes — Understanding Electronic Monitoring in Pelagic Fisheries

the Editor says: There are countless jobs in the world, and a group of people use surveillance footage, image-processing systems, and AI-powered automatic species identification to effectively monitor fishing vessel operations and document onboard catch activities. What exactly do electronic monitors in pelagic fisheries do? Read on to find out! <Full article reproduced from Environmental Information Center, author: Tsai Pei-yun 2024.01.22>

After the Taiwanese drama The Defender of Baximen premiered in July 2023, it sparked wave after wave of public debate. Many friends who had never paid attention to pelagic fisheries suddenly became fascinated by the industry, asking whether it was really as dark as the show portrayed. The drama's storylines — illegal shark fishing, an Indonesian fisherman driven to murder after being abused, and the mysterious disappearance of a foreign (American) fisheries observer — are all very similar to events that have actually taken place in real life (brief summaries of two real incidents [1][2]).

Our oceans are boundless, providing a critical source of food for hundreds of millions of people around the world. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), marine capture fisheries account for half of global fisheries production. Distant-water fishing vessels that operate on the high seas or within other nations' exclusive economic zones play an important role in meeting ever-growing demand for seafood. These vessels travel across all three major oceans, and most of the time, once a vessel departs, it won't enter port for at least six months — relying instead on at-sea transshipment of catch and resupply of essentials to remain at sea continuously. It is precisely this mode of operation that makes pelagic fisheries management so challenging, and that has allowed Taiwan — one of the world's major distant-water fishing powers — to be overshadowed by the specter of illegal fishing.

How Do You Manage a Vast Ocean?

Every year, thousands of distant-water fishing vessels operate across the world's high seas, targeting everything from sardines to Pacific Bluefin Tuna. Once upon a time, ocean resources were thought to be inexhaustible, but as fishery resources became heavily exploited, nations gradually came to appreciate the importance of management and conservation.

In 1982, the United Nations adopted the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which not only granted all nations the right to fish on the high seas but also required countries to cooperate with one another in taking measures necessary to conserve living marine resources on the high seas. The UN went further in 1995, adopting the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA), which explicitly established the rights and obligations of states with respect to straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks, making Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) the cornerstone of international fisheries management.

While RFMOs can establish relevant regulations for high-seas fisheries management, vessels and aircraft have long been regarded as extensions or floating territories of their flag states — meaning flag states remain the ultimate authorities over distant-water fishing vessels, and each country's regulations and enforcement capacity are crucial to vessel management.

Currently, national authorities and RFMO managers are actively gathering information on fishing activities, conducting science-based fisheries stock assessments, and establishing and implementing related regulations. There are many methods for collecting data, including fishing logbooks, onboard records by human observers, port inspections, and at-sea patrols — but these methods are often hampered by infrequent use, the possibility of misreporting, prohibitively high costs, or insufficient accuracy, leaving stakeholders in pelagic fisheries hesitant to take meaningful steps toward improved sustainability.

At the same time, the catch from distant-water fishing vessels is not only landed and transshipped at domestic and foreign ports — it is very often transshipped at sea. Confirming the accuracy of this information requires not only data reports from fishing and carrier vessels, but also port inspections and at-sea documentation and auditing. Because distant-water fishing vessels operate across such vast sea areas, collecting data at sea is inherently difficult. To address this challenge, most RFMOs have established observer programs to facilitate the collection of comprehensive fisheries data.

So, What Data Do Observers Need to Collect?

The objective of the Regional Observer Programme should be to collect verified catch information from the Convention Area, other scientific information and information related to fisheries in the Convention Area to monitor the implementation of relevant Conservation and Management Measures of the (Western and Central Pacific Fisheries) Commission.

Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) Conservation and Management Measure 2018-05

The passage above describes the objective of the WCPFC's Regional Observer Programme (ROP). In short, the job of an observer is essentially to collect data — but the amount of information to be gathered is considerable.

Under the WCPFC Regional Observer Programme, observers are required to record nearly 100 types of data, ranging from basic vessel information to length measurements of various caught species. Basic vessel data — such as the vessel name and vessel owner — can be recorded once before boarding or at the start of a voyage, but catch information must be recorded every time a fishing operation takes place. In addition, if the vessel an observer is on conducts at-sea transshipment, the observer must also document the details of those transshipment activities, including the vessels involved, the coordinates of the transshipment, the date, and the quantities and species transshipped. Because at-sea transshipment is an extremely common practice in pelagic fisheries but raises concerns about unreported or non-compliant transshipments — particularly on the high seas — that could distort catch data or even facilitate IUU fishing, RFMOs now generally require observers to be present on carrier vessels to record these at-sea transshipment activities.

Currently, while RFMOs require 100% observer coverage for purse seiners, the required observer coverage rate for longline vessels is typically only 5% [3]. This significant discrepancy in observer coverage is not only detrimental to scientific research, but also undermines sustainable fisheries management.

Enter the Electronic Monitor (EM)!

Electronic Monitoring (EM) systems have actually been in development for quite some time — European and American countries began developing and implementing them roughly 20 years ago, and Taiwan started developing its own EM systems approximately 10 years ago [4].

In general, an EM system typically consists of a set of cameras and sensors connected to an onboard computer, along with a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) [5]. The footage captured by cameras and the data recorded by sensors are stored on a hard drive; when a fishing voyage ends, the hard drive is retrieved and analyzed by shore-based analysts, who compile data such as catch volumes, bycatch, discards, and fishing locations. However, some EM system providers have already moved toward using software to automatically analyze footage, flagging key vessel activity segments, and transmitting data via Wi-Fi or satellite rather than relying on the physical transport of hard drives.

As more countries and fishing vessels adopt EM systems to collect data, numerous studies have highlighted that EM can improve the accuracy of fishing logbooks, reduce IUU fishing behavior, increase the availability of data on biodiversity and protected species, and enhance managers' ability to monitor vessel compliance with regulations. The Pew Charitable Trusts' 2019 publication Electronic Monitoring: A Key Tool for Global Fisheries Management summarizes the advantages of EM systems, including:

• When the cost of deploying human observers is relatively high, EM systems can reduce costs

• Hiring personnel to review monitoring data and maintain systems can create employment opportunities

• Vessel owners or fishing companies can use EM systems to monitor their own vessels' operations, ensuring legality and transparency

• Space-limited vessels benefit from not needing to accommodate a human observer

• Because electronic monitors are not subject to human interference such as intimidation or bribery, the integrity of the data can be ensured

Of course, relevant stakeholders still have reservations about EM systems, including the significant upfront capital investment in equipment, the inability to replace human observers for biological sample collection, the need for regular cleaning of onboard camera lenses, a shortage of personnel for footage analysis, and concerns about crew privacy. However, technology is advancing rapidly, with more and more manufacturers investing in EM development, causing equipment costs to continue to fall; meanwhile, software for processing and analyzing footage continues to improve and can now identify and blur faces and bodies to reduce privacy concerns. Furthermore, the current goal of developing electronic monitoring is to supplement human observers in collecting more comprehensive data — not to replace them — and to increase overall observer coverage (including both electronic and human observers) to ensure fisheries management stays on a sustainable path.

For Sustainability's Sake, the Industry Is Also Moving

Although the initial driving force behind EM system development came primarily from the regulatory needs of management bodies, the growth of the sustainable seafood market over the past decade has generated increasing interest in EM throughout the entire seafood supply chain. Using EM can verify that fishing activities meet market buyers' requirements (e.g., legality) and helps obtain the data needed for sustainable fisheries certifications (e.g., bycatch records).

In 2021, Thai Union (TU) — one of the world's largest seafood companies — announced a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to install EM systems on vessels supplying to them, in order to increase supply chain transparency and eliminate IUU fishing. In June of last year, Walmart, the world's largest retailer, announced that by 2027 all of its seafood will come exclusively from vessels with 100% observer coverage (including both human and electronic observers).

In 2022, Pew published a series of related white papers; one of them focused on the role of seafood supply chain stakeholders in integrating EM. The report noted that retailers and seafood suppliers have begun working together to identify transparency and IUU-related issues in the supply chain and to develop solutions, while fishing companies have also started taking steps — including deploying EM — to improve supply chain transparency.

In late October 2023, Pew, the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA), and Japanese sustainable seafood advisory firm Seafood Legacy co-hosted an electronic monitoring workshop in Tokyo, Japan. FCF (豐群水產), a Taiwanese company and one of the world's top three seafood traders, was among the workshop's speakers. FCF representatives stated that the company has been actively experimenting with various technologies to ensure fisheries sustainability, and that EM can indeed enhance the collection of fisheries science data — which is one of the main reasons they have been actively trialing EM in recent years. However, they also face challenges including upfront costs, crew awareness and training onboard, and the time and personnel required for back-end data analysis. Other speakers included Transparency and Sustainability (TNS) Industries from a Korean fishing company and Chinese company Luen Thai Fishing Ventures, both of whom echoed the advantages and challenges of EM discussed in this article.

Although both the hardware and software of EM systems still have room for improvement, and regulations around EM vary across countries and regional fisheries management organizations, EM technology is advancing rapidly compared to ten years ago — and progress in AI technology over the next five years may accelerate this trend even further. In fact, the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), both major tuna RFMOs, have already taken the lead in adopting EM-related regulations.

EM is far from perfect, but many stakeholders throughout the fisheries production chain have noted that EM is not only usable but genuinely practical — and that alone is reason enough to keep pushing forward and to watch this space with great anticipation.

Footnotes

[1] The "Ping Chun No. 16" incident depicted in the drama bears many similarities to the real-life tragedy of the "Ho Chun No. 61" in 2016. According to Greenpeace's 2018 report The Human Cost, in May 2016, the longliner Ho Chun No. 61 — flagged to Vanuatu — departed from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, bound for the Western and Central Pacific fishing grounds. The vessel carried 28 crew members: 6 Vietnamese, 7 Filipino, and 13 Indonesian nationals, with a Chinese captain and a Taiwanese vessel owner. On the night of September 7, 2016, six Indonesian crew members broke into the captain's cabin, attacked, and killed him. The following day, the chief engineer contacted the Taiwanese shipowner to report the captain's death, and the vessel immediately sailed to Fiji, where the six crew members were questioned by Fijian police and admitted to participating in the killing. In early 2017, the Supreme Court of Vanuatu sentenced the six Indonesian crew members to 18 years in prison, with no parole for less than 9 years served; if paroled, they would be repatriated to Indonesia to serve the remainder of their sentences. Court records from Vanuatu and interviews conducted by Greenpeace with the six imprisoned crew members both indicate that the men had long endured discrimination, physical beatings, and verbal and physical violence from the captain — and that forced labor conditions may well have existed on the vessel even before the captain's death.

[2] The storyline of the mysterious disappearance of foreign fisheries observer Kenny Dowson in the drama closely mirrors the real-life 2015 case of American observer Keith Davis. According to a 2021 report by The Reporter on distant-water fisheries, titled "Four Deaths of Foreign Fisheries Observers — Untold Truths Aboard Taiwan's Distant-Water Fishing Vessels," on September 10, 2015, Davis boarded the fishing vessel Chung Kuo 818 from the Panama-flagged carrier vessel Victoria 168 (owned by a Taiwanese national) in waters off the western coast of Peru, and carried out his inspection as usual. At around 4 p.m., a crew member discovered that Davis was no longer on board, while his life jacket remained in the cabin. The captain immediately launched a search, but Davis was nowhere to be found. Thirty hours after his disappearance, the U.S. Coast Guard dispatched a search fleet that scoured an area the equivalent of 50,000 football fields — but still found no trace of him.

[3] The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) requires a 10% observer coverage rate for longline vessels.

[4] Council of Agriculture, Opening the Smart Eye of Fisheries Management: Development and Future Trends of Electronic Monitoring

[5] The specific equipment in each electronic monitoring system will vary slightly depending on the type of fishing vessel and the data collection objectives.

Editor in charge: Jenny Tsai

Further reading:

• Is the Age of Deep-Sea Mining Upon Us? The Conflict Between Seabed Mineral Extraction and Marine Ecosystems

• Entanglement: The Second Leading Cause of Whale Deaths — The U.S. Develops "Ropeless" Lobster Fishing Gear

Full article reproduced with permission from Environmental Information Center. Original title: It's Not a "Person," But It Has Eagle Eyes — Understanding Electronic Monitoring in Pelagic Fisheries