How satellite systems in space are helping to tackle the scourge of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
Despite their immense significance to the global economy, the world’s oceans can often feel like an infinitely large blind spot for maritime nations. Activity more than about ten miles from land - not to mention anything taking place beneath the surface of the ocean - has historically been virtually impossible to monitor effectively. Regulating our seas has long proved to be an immense challenge for those tasked with doing so. The truism “out of sight, out of mind” is applicable here, and that which cannot be effectively monitored cannot be effectively combatted. This has led to a variety of criminal activity at sea, ranging from piracy and terrorism to drug trafficking, human smuggling and illicit fishing.
This latter activity can broadly be broken down into three distinct types of maritime malfeasance: illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. It is worth briefly defining each of these in turn: illegal fishing involves breaking the laws and regulations of a state or managed area, or simply fishing without permission; unreported fishing, meanwhile, refers to a failure to report (or underreport) catches to regional, national, or international authorities; and unregulated fishing is activity undertaken by boats without nationality, or by those fishing for stocks that are not managed or protected.
While much emphasis has traditionally been put on illegal fishing, the most recent studies on the topic suggest that it is in fact unreported and unregulated fishing that causes the most damage - both economic and environmental. This is thought to be simply because the barriers to unreported and unregulated activity are lower than to fishing that is outright illegal. Yet again, this is a problem of effective monitoring; even if conventional tracking data allows authorities some confidence that a particular fishing boat is operating generally within the law, spotting suspicious patterns in its activities, verifying exactly where it has operated while at sea, and checking that it has taken only properly managed stock remain fundamentally challenging tasks.
And while IUU fishing is a particular scourge on countries with large maritime economies, the ripple effects of this criminal activity - which is believed to make up around one fifth of global fishing activity - are felt the world over. Around 26 million tonnes of seafood are robbed from our oceans every year, causing an estimated 23 billion USD of financial losses annually, and thereby affecting every part of the production chain, from producer to consumer. While IUU fishing means consumers endure higher prices once products hit the supermarket shelves, arguably the most devastating impact is on the livelihoods of legitimate fishers and their families, who struggle to maintain their sanctioned operations in the face of competition from those operating outside the regulations.
Aside from the economic impact of IUU, it is vital to understand the closely interconnected environmental cost this criminal activity has. The stark truth is this: fish and seafood are increasingly finite resources, and we are rapidly running out of them. This is further exacerbated by the impacts of pollution, which makes an already scarce resource scarcer still and creates a situation where IUU fishing becomes an even greater temptation for those willing to flout the regulations and the law.
In many ways, the Commonwealth is at the front line of this battle for the seas. This is because many of the 56 nations making up the group have relatively small land territories combined with large EEZ (exclusive economic zones), areas of the ocean that extend 200 nautical miles beyond territorial seas and over which the coastal nation has jurisdiction for all resources, including fish and seafood stocks. An illustration of this is the nation of Antigua and Barbuda, which has a land surface area of 440 square kilometres and an ocean EEZ that is more than 250 times its size at 111,000 square kilometres.
Sustainable management of the ocean is therefore particularly important in the EEZs of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the 56 Commonwealth nations for whom the ocean is often a primary economic hub, but where environmental change is threatening local populations and invasive IUU fishing fleets are plundering marine resources, polluting the ocean, and threatening the vitality of local fishing economies. The level of reliance on the blue economy can seem staggering. For some SIDS, up to 90% economic activity is ocean-based. For instance, in 2019, the fishing sector provided stable jobs to an estimated 350,000 people in 17 Caribbean countries, leading to a production valued at more than USD 500 million.
With the stakes this high, the ability to detect, monitor and prevent IUU activity has never been more important. Fortunately, technological developments are giving maritime authorities the upper hand in the fight against crime on our oceans, and Earth observation satellite technology is rapidly becoming a critical national infrastructure.
Leading this technological charge is MDA, a Canadian space technology company with over 30 years’ experience in wide-area space-based radar Earth observation. Its technology has already been used in a variety of contexts, from scientific exploration to security enhancement, and the maritime domain insights it provides are helping every day to enable better governance of global ocean environments.
MDA’s technology works using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology. Its satellites can transmit pulses towards Earth and measure the energy that is scattered back into space. This in turn allows the satellite’s radar to form an image of what can be ‘seen’ on Earth’s surface, providing up-to-date and wide-ranging coverage of previously hard-to-see areas of our globe in all weather conditions, day or night.
Since the launch of Canada’s first Earth observation mission in 1995, MDA’s technology has been developed in an iterative, constantly-improving fashion. The RADARSAT-1 program, built by MDA for the Canadian Space Agency, with MDA as the commercial data distributor, set the industry standard, delivering data for both commercial and scientific users, focusing in particular on disaster management, interferometry, agriculture, cartography, hydrology, forestry, oceanography, ice studies and coastal monitoring.
Then, in 2007, the launch of the follow-on RADARSAT-2 satellite introduced enhanced capabilities for marine surveillance, ice monitoring, disaster management, environmental monitoring, resource management and mapping, both in the company’s home territory, Canada, and around the world. Developed by MDA and operated as public-private partnership with the Government of Canada, it became the world’s largest imaging capacity commercial radar system and its versatile, multi-modal imaging technology allowed MDA to establish itself as the market leader in commercial radar imaging.
In 2019, the Canadian government launched the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM), built by MDA, which operate in a configuration of three satellites working together to collect data specifically focused on maritime surveillance, disaster management and ecosystem monitoring. The technology has already provided critical information on both natural and man-made disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, oil spills and flooding. Satellite imaging has been used to measure damage and pave the way for recovery efforts. Thanks to the ability to monitor complex and shifting landscapes, the satellite images are also able to track shifting ice patterns in the Arctic and to monitor large-scale ecosystems, such as marshes, forests and farmland. Currently, the technology can provide coverage of around 90% of the Earth’s surface, through lightning storms, darkness, and other adverse conditions, including smog. Trends in technological advances will only make this coverage more complete.
MDA’s technology has already become a key tool for those looking to keep the oceans safe and protect its resources. Recently, MDA made two key partnership announcements relating to maritime domain protection. First, an agreement to share archived data with Global Fishing Watch, a non-governmental organization whose purpose is to improve ocean sustainability. The move will help the organisation develop a clearer picture of the world’s oceans, thereby allowing it to advance its mission of better ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea. MDA also announced a partnership with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans specifically to counter IUU fishing in the Indo-Pacific, which is one of the global hotspots for such illicit activity. It is hoped that the enhanced surveillance will help the relevant local authorities rapidly intercept and prevent fishing boats that persist in working outside regulatory frameworks.
One major benefit of the SAR technology is that it undercuts the most common tactic used by IUU fishing boats. In the past, these boats would simply turn off their tracking devices to avoid detection while committing crimes on the water. While traditional ocean tracking technology would lose these “dark vessels”, MDA’s satellite radar is able to peer into these oceanic recesses, bringing to light the activity, which can then be cross-referenced with other data sources to provide actionable insights into activity that undermines maritime security.
Challenges remain, however, particularly for nations with large areas that require monitoring. The United Kingdom’s EEZ, for example, the fifth largest in the world, extends to around 7 million square kilometres. Covering such a large territory can prove difficult. Fortunately, MDA’s RADARSAT-2 includes functionality specially built to address such wide area monitoring problems. The satellite’s wide area coverage modes, capable of imaging 225,000 square kilometres in a single scene, allow nations and organisations tasked with protecting large swathes of territory to do so more straightforwardly. Finding the proverbial needle in the haystack is becoming an ever-more realistic proposition.
MDA is currently developing on its latest iteration of the RADARSAT technology. Its next generation Earth observation mission, CHORUS, is set to be significantly more advanced than what has come before, and the company believes it will change the way we see the world by providing the most extensive radar imaging capacity on the market. In a one-system package, CHORUS will provide industry-leading broad area coverage with a 700km-wide swath to sub-metre extremely high resolution spotlight images. In other words, MDA will soon be able to provide its clients with the clearest-ever picture of once hard-to-see parts of their territories.
CHORUS
The CHORUS constellation will be a world-leading capability that leverages MDA’s multi- decade expertise and will provide the most extensive radar imaging capacity available on the
market in one system, ranging from industry-leading broad area coverage with a 700km-
wide swath to sub-metre very high resolution spotlight images.
Leveraging the most advanced innovation available, CHORUS integrates the best of
RADARSAT-2 and RCM, and will be unique in the marketplace. The architecture of the
constellation will consist of two Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites – a large C-Band satellite and smaller trailing X-Band satellite, and will operate in an inclined Low Earth Orbit
(LEO) between the latitudes of ± 62.5°, day or night and in all weather conditions. Together,
CHORUS C and CHORUS X will provide many minutes of imaging per orbit.
The two satellites will be able to collect images independent of each other or work in a cross-
cue mode, allowing the trailing satellite to provide higher resolution data over targets of
interest identified by the larger C-band satellite.
Through a cloud-based global network of ground stations, CHORUS will support fast tasking, near real-time downlink, processing, exploitation, and delivery in support of
maritime surveillance, land intelligence, disaster response and other time critical
applications, and will deliver near-real time information products to the global civil, defence
and commercial Earth observation market.
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One thing is clear, at a time when human activity is endangering the oceans and seas – our planet’s largest ecosystem – and affecting the food supply and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, the demand for enhanced maritime domain awareness is only set to grow. Increasingly, the protection of our oceans is becoming enshrined in both national and transnational agreements. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 14 sets out to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources'', and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which was signed by 150 government leaders, has established a target to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. The need to monitor their oceans is also being felt ever more keenly by individual nations as they seek to prevent IUU fishing, smuggling, pollution, and even encroachments on their sovereignty by other countries.
Despite the utility of its technology to single nations, MDA is also motivated by the idea of the “common ocean”, the concept of collective responsibility for our “one” ocean. While individual nations, especially developing nations, are limited in what they can achieve alone, the Commonwealth provides a model for foundational awareness and cooperation, with more developed nations leading the way. The United Kingdom, for example, has established the Blue Planet Fund, a program supporting developing countries to protect the marine environment and reduce poverty. Thanks to MDA’s flexible business models, it is also possible for monitoring to be started on smaller areas and for shorter time frames – scaling up as proven value and funding streams are established. A Commonwealth synergy of developed and developing nations and MDA’s proven and possible technology presents as a tantalising opportunity to dramatically improve global maritime domain awareness and help tackle enduring scourges on the high seas.
Content supported by MDA Systems Ltd
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