All Eyes On The Sea
June 27th, 2017
Via Raconteur, an interesting look at how mobilizing a global citizens’ watch over the oceans is helping to combat the crime of illegal fishing:
Fishing is not the obvious focus for a major project that features both a Hollywood star and the world’s most valuable brand. However, this is not just a tale about food – this is a modern-day, global crime story.
Fish stocks worldwide are getting squeezed by legitimate operations, but also illegal activity, explains Toby Middleton, programme director of the Marine Stewardship Council. “Globally, about a third of fish stocks are overfished,” he says. “But stocks fished to their sustainable limit have steadily increased over the past 15 years from 47 per cent to 58 per cent. However, between 11 and 26 million tonnes of fish are illegally caught every year.”
In response, September last year saw Leonardo DiCaprio and then-US Secretary of State John Kerry officially launch Global Fishing Watch. The platform provides a digital tool powered by Google that adds more than 22 million data points daily to help track fleets, and expose rogue and illegal activity harmful to ocean biodiversity and marine ecosystems.
GLOBAL COLLABORATION
The information is free to browse and available to anyone with an internet connection, from governments and NGOs, through fisheries, seafood suppliers and buyers, to journalists and private individuals anywhere around the world.
The input of activists, campaigners and other citizens concerned about overfishing is directly encouraged and enabled; in effect, the crowd is invited to help police the problem.
The most important element of success for the project among all our partnerships and stakeholders is a common goal of promoting transparency at sea
Fundamentally, though, it is not the technology itself that is unique, but the mix of partners in collaboration. Global Fishing Watch harnesses the technological muscle of digital mapping and big data in support of advocacy. It brings together expertise in satellite imagery and remote sensing from SkyTruth, with the internet and cloud platform capabilities of Google, plus the campaigning focus of Oceana, an international group formed to protect oceans. Funding partners include the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Governments also have a key role to play in the project, not just with their political endorsement, but their data. Earlier this month, both Peru and Indonesia committed to publishing government-owned vessel tracking data on the platform, taking major steps towards fishing transparency.
Despite the complexity of managing such a multi-stakeholder project, however, the metrics of its success remain relatively simple, says Jacqueline Savitz, Oceana’s senior vice president for US oceans and Global Fishing Watch. “The success of Global Fishing Watch is best measured by the impacts it creates, impacts like assisting in getting a vessel fined for fishing illegally in a protected area or convincing a local community to protect its areas from encroaching fleets,” she says.
It is all about getting eyes on the problem, concludes Ms Savitz: “The most important element of success for the project among all our partnerships and stakeholders is a common goal of promoting transparency at sea. To restore fisheries and address problems like illegal fishing and overfishing, activities at sea need to be visible; the global community needs to see what is actually happening beyond the horizon. Only then can we effectively protect our oceans.”
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Read More »Sensors Detect Shooting; Help Authorities Catch Elephant Poachers
June 19th, 2017
Via Vanderbilt University, a report on the use of ballistic shockwave sensors to help combat poaching:
Kenyan elephants will get more protection from poachers thanks to new Vanderbilt University technology embedded in their tracking collars — ballistic shockwave sensors that send coordinates to authorities immediately after detecting gunshots.
The new system is the first use of shockwave detection technology in the intensified push to thwart illegal trafficking and save endangered African elephants.
Dubbed WIPER, the project is a joint effort between Vanderbilt computer engineering faculty and Colorado State University, which has used GPS in tracking collars for years to study and protect elephants, slaughtered by the thousands for their ivory tusks.
Elephant poachers routinely use devices to muzzle the sound from their high-powered weapons, but the blast also produces an acoustic shockwave, which cannot be suppressed. WIPER technology detects that a bullet flew by a protected elephant and sends an alarm with its location.
The slaughter of elephants and other iconic African animals is fueled by rising demand for ivory in parts of the Far East. As demand increases, prices skyrocket and make illegal trafficking a lucrative, if risky, option. Save the Elephants estimates that 100,000 elephants were killed for their tusks between 2010 and 2012 alone as poaching efforts migrated from the Central African forests to East Africa.Vanderbilt University Professor of Computer Engineering Akos Ledeczi teamed up with George Wittemyer of Colorado State University, who is also chairman of the scientific board of Save the Elephants. The Kenya-based organization has collared more than 1,000 elephants.
Ledeczi’s expertise is in acoustic shooter detection, localization and classification. He and his team have received major grants from DARPA and built multiple wireless sensor nodes to detect and locate the source of gunfire.
WIPER got a significant boost June 7 with announcement of a $200,000 grant from the Vodafone Americas Foundation. The technology placed second out of eight finalists in Vodafone’s annual Wireless Innovation Project. The awards were announced as part of the 2017 Social Innovation Summit in Chicago.
“Our aim is to make WIPER open-source, freely available to all collar manufacturers, so that it can become a common feature in all wildlife tracking devices,” said Ledeczi, who also has received a Vanderbilt Discover Grant to support the project.
Authorities and wildlife protection groups already use a range of methods to interrupt the ivory trade, including planes and drones that identify poacher blinds and animal carcasses. But such systems have limitations. Lower-cost quad-rotor UAVs (drones) can stay up for only 30 minutes. Fixed-wing UAVs with sophisticated cameras can remain airborne longer but are expensive to buy and operate.
WIPER needs only a few sensor collars per herd, because each one can cover all wildlife within a 50-meter radius.
The Vodafone grant will support prototype development and field-testing for shot detection accuracy and power requirements. Next will be integrating the sensor with an existing commercial GPS collar, manufactured by partner Savannah Tracking of Kenya.
Field studies with collared elephants in Northern Kenya follow. The goal is battery power that lasts 12 months. At that point, the team envisions sensor-enabled collars on 100 elephants each year.
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