Tech for good—Chinese “fishing” vessels and the Spratly Islands

While working for a Seattle tech company, I was asked if we could determine whether Chinese fishing vessels were doing more than fishing in the hotly contested Spratly Islands. Since I had spent the last 12 months developing methods to do this using satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar, Electro-Optical imagery, and other types of satellite data, I said “of course.” Together with colleagues, I uncovered the a story of hundreds of large fishing vessels that spent little or no time fishing. A case in point was a group of 9 brand new 62.7 meter trawlers, which probably cost more than $100 million to build in China. They spent most of their time at Chinese bases, or anchored near facilities run by other countries, no doubt offering pleasant company and helpful advice to fishermen from other countries on much smaller boats.

I presented this work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ launch of their Stephenson Ocean Security Project in Washington, DC, Jan 9, 2019. Here is an audio file of this presentation, I start at 51:15. The published work is here: Illuminating the South China Sea’s Dark Fishing Fleets, presented by CSIS.