🌅 Today’s stat: 75%

SOURCE

Global Fishing Watch

WHAT TO KNOW

• Three quarters of the world’s industrial fishing boats are hidden from public monitoring systems that track commercial activity at sea. The boats, called “dark vessels,” disable their transponders to hide their location while illegally fishing in protected waters.

WHY IT MATTERS

• While not all boats are required to broadcast their locations, dark fishing vessels pose a major challenge to protecting and managing natural resources, as well as determining whether countries are respecting each others’ national waters. Uncovering the illegal activity at sea is also far more difficult than it is on land, where monitoring groups have detailed maps and images of roads, buildings, and important infrastructure.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• China is the world’s leading fishing country and has the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet, accounting for 17% of the global catch from 2010 to 2019. Fishing boats owned and operated by China are notoriously aggressive—often escorted by armed military—and frequently accused of “illegal, unreported, or unregulated” fishing activity, including a recent incident involving hundreds of Chinese fishing boats lingering just outside Argentina’s waters.