Global Fishing Activity Tracker Screensaver
The Global Fishing Activity Tracker screensaver ranks countries by real satellite-detected fishing vessel activity. It is free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Global Fishing Activity Tracker screensaver works
The saver reads real recent fishing-effort data by vessel flag from the Global Fishing Watch API.
Countries are ranked by real detected fishing hours, highest first.
The pipeline refreshes the board on its own schedule.
A free, application-approved Global Fishing Watch API token is required.
Inferring fishing from ship transponders
Global Fishing Watch is an international nonprofit founded in 2015 by Oceana, SkyTruth and Google; it became an independent organisation in 2017. Its map is built largely from the Automatic Identification System, or AIS, a transponder that vessels carry for safety at sea and that broadcasts a ship’s identity, position and speed. Satellite and shore-based receivers collect those signals.
Because a ship does not announce what it is doing, fishing is inferred. The published method uses neural-network models: one classifies vessels by type, such as trawlers, longliners and purse seiners, and another scores each AIS position for whether the movement looks like fishing. The outputs are labelled apparent fishing effort, meaning detected hours that are not confirmed records of fishing. Those hours are then summed, here by the flag state under which each vessel is registered.
The method has gaps that matter. Vessels without AIS, including many small boats, do not appear, some vessels switch their transponder off, and reception quality and gear type change how accurate the detection is from region to region. The result is a picture of detected activity among tracked fleets, not a full account of global fishing, and a flag-state ranking does not say where the fish were caught or landed.
A worked example
A flag country with real high detected fishing activity sits at the top of the board, exactly matching Global Fishing Watch's own satellite analysis.
Settings & tips
- Activity is real satellite-detected vessel behavior, not self-reported.
- Accent recolours the ranking bars.
- Global Fishing Watch is a real nonprofit ocean-monitoring initiative.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real fishing data?
- Yes — real satellite-detected activity from Global Fishing Watch.
- Is a key needed?
- Yes, a free approved API token is required to activate this feed.
- Does this track illegal fishing?
- It shows real detected activity; interpretation of legality requires further context.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- What is AIS?
- It is a radio transponder system that broadcasts a vessel’s identity, location and speed, designed originally for safety at sea.
- Is fishing effort the same as catch?
- No. Effort measures time spent fishing, while catch depends on gear, location and luck, so the two are only loosely related.
- What does flag state mean?
- It is the country where a vessel is registered and whose laws it sails under, which can differ from the owner’s nationality or the waters it fishes.