GLOBAL FISHING WATCH SECURES US$60 MLN FUNDING TO REVOLUTIONISE OCEAN MANAGEMENT 

KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 (Bernama) -- Global Fishing Watch has received a five-year US$60 million commitment via The Audacious Project to leverage open data and emerging technology to revolutionise global ocean management. (US$1=RM4.60)

In a statement, it said the ocean conservation nonprofit will publicly map more than one million ocean-going vessels and all fixed infrastructure at sea, over the next five years.

Housed within TED, a nonprofit dedicated to “ideas worth spreading”, The Audacious Project selects a cohort of projects every year that represent bold solutions to critical challenges facing the world.

By connecting these ambitious initiatives with an inspiring group of donors and supporters, The Audacious Project helps accelerate big ideas and amplify the overall impact of the work.

Global Fishing Watch chief executive officer, Tony Long, delivered a TED Talk released on World Ocean Day (June 8) describing the organisation's pioneering project to map and monitor all industrial activity at sea and make this knowledge freely available to the world.

“We are honoured to receive this catalytic funding through The Audacious Project, which clearly signals support for our innovative technology to tackle the urgent crisis in our ocean. With this investment, we can transform how we manage the ocean by making the invisible visible,” said Long.

Meanwhile, executive director at The Audacious Project, Anna Verghese said: “The audacious work being done by Global Fishing Watch will transform how we see the ocean and our place in it. We are excited about the change Global Fishing Watch will catalyse over the coming years with this surge in support.”

Under this open ocean project, Global Fishing Watch will combine GPS data with millions of gigabytes of satellite imagery and use machine learning to publicly display the activity of all industrial fishing vessels and hundreds of thousands of small-scale fishing boats and cargo ships.

Founded in 2015 as a collaboration between Oceana, SkyTruth and Google, Global Fishing Watch has demonstrated the power of artificial intelligence and satellite data to shine a light on global fishing activity, building the first-ever map to visualise and publicly track industrial fishing vessels in near real-time.

-- BERNAMA