The Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA) will collaborate with Google and other companies to bring in a system in order to monitor the issue of illegal poaching at sea. There have been regular reports with an increase of foreign ships fishing waters around Japan without legal way.

The steps being taken is all about efforts to investigate marine poaching in Japanese waters due to the fact that illegal operations by foreign vessels are believed to be one of the reasons behind the recently decreased catches in Japan of sanma saury and many other marine products.

The proposed scheme will utilize a system called as Global Fishing Watch, which was in fact developed by the US information technology giant, Google and other entities. The system can help in this regard by displaying ship’s current positions and courses taken over a map and based on information sent from the vessels’ automatic ship identification systems that are received by the base stations on the ground and satellites.

As per the expectation, the system will help in finding the ships that are operating in areas where fishing is prohibited. Along with that, the system will also deliver data regarding the ports to which the illegal fishing is being sent to. The system will send images of ships and other related data to Google and the company, in turn, will send the map data such as vessel movements. The first place to start the investigations will be the Pacific.

The Global Fishing Watch along with Google, which is involved with it, has signed an agreement with the FRA. Also involved is an Australian institute with them. To begin the action plan, all the three groups are slated to meet in October or later, before they begin any kind of joint surveillance of illegal fishing with the Fisheries Agency.

A total of 5,191 warnings were issued in 2017 alone, according to the agency, demanding foreign ships to stop illegal fishing and leave the Sea of Japan. Particularly, in the Sea of Japan, there is an increasing number of illegal operations by ships believed to be from North Korea to catch some squid.

The technological solutions being offered by Google with regard to maps are amazing. It has helped many things in our life to navigate easily. And when such technologies combine, more amazing technologies come to the fore.

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