Illegal Fishing Mapped

Some fishing fleets are managing to illegally flout international and national fishing quota regulations by transferring fish at sea to large 'reefers', large commercial vessels which receive and freeze the fish before transporting them to other destinations. In this way the fishing ships are able to avoid detection of their over-fishing by local fishing authorities.

ODI has used data from FishSpektrum to map the suspicious movements of 35 reefers in western African waters in 2013. Western Africa's Missing Fish uses CartoDB's Torque library to animate the tracks of these 35 commercial vessels.

Each of these animated maps is accompanied by a brief 'Tracking History', which explains the reefer's activity and why this is thought to be suspicious. Details about where the ship is registered, its type and its carrying capacity is also provided.