Video: Big Brother map instantly spots illegal fishing
Big Brother is now watching fishing fleets. A giant map of the world displayed on a video wall can instantly detect if fish are being stolen from the ocean.
Developed by in the UK and the technology cost 拢1 million to build and displays the location of large fishing vessels on top of satellite images combined with a topographical map of the ocean floor. Ships, which are tracked by transponder, are represented by glowing blue dots.
Although it is against the law to switch off the tracking device, a vessel may do so to fish illegally in a protected area, causing it to vanish from the display. The disappearance sends an alert to the system in 18 milliseconds, whereas previously it took a team of analysts up to 18 hours to pick up on a suspicious ship.
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Displaying features of the ocean floor helps determine the type of fish in a given area, which can be cross-referenced with the species a vessel鈥檚 fishing licence permits it to catch.
Illegal and unreported fishing is rampant, amounting to about $23.5 billion a year. Up to 9000 kilograms of seafood is stolen from the ocean every second.
