Illegal fishing is a global problem that threatens the health of ocean ecosystems and the economic viability of the fishing industry.
Illegal fishing is a global problem that threatens the health of ocean ecosystems and the economic viability of the fishing industry. Marine protected areas (MPAs)—zones set aside to safeguard marine life—are a key tool for conservation, but monitoring them has been a long-standing challenge.
Researchers led by the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Jennifer Raynor showed that artificial intelligence methods applied to satellite data provide a powerful new way to assess industrial fishing activity in MPAs, bridging blind spots in current monitoring methods. The first-of-its-kind study, published in the journal Science, found that the world’s most strongly protected MPAs had little-to-no industrial fishing activity.
“We found that MPAs with strict legal fishing bans work better than critics claim,” says Raynor, a professor of natural resource economics in UW–Madison’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. “MPAs can help to regenerate fish populations, which creates strong incentives for illegal fishing—and yet, that activity was mostly absent. This is good news for marine conservation.”
Read More: University of Wisconsin – Madison
