6 ms·

So this is something I work with directly, but for some other agency. First off, a big reason as to why - is because the laws differ from country to country. S

So this is something I work with directly, but for some other agency. First off, a big reason as to why - is because the laws differ from country to country. Some countries, like Norway for example, require shipping vessels over a certain length to broadcast their positions through AIS, VMS. This may not be the case for, say, UK. There are arguments to be had from both systems as to WHY you wouldn't want to broadcast your positions at all times - a typical one is that other could easily infer your fishing fields (fishing patterns are trivial, if you've worked with this you can easily spot what tools they are fishing with, and likely what species they are going for - don't need ML-based systems for that. Any fisher or fisheries analyst can spot the patterns), and thus go after that. The other is privacy. A very typical thing is that ships turn off their AIS as soon as they enter international waters. There is no enforcement of that, and many developed countries have practically zero resources to fight illegal fishing, from a technological point of view. UNDP has a program which is aimed at helping developing countries with the tech and training to detect illegal fishing, but there's a long way to go. Developing countries desperately need the data, which is either owned by governments, or private actors. AIS data is either picked up by satellites, or base stations. VMS systems are expensive, but also allow for ships to transfer catch reports and similar - but is unfortunately not always enforced in a good way. But tech is becoming better. Satellites with NAV/marine radar detectors are in orbit. Long-range drones with sensors are a thing. Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to have certain sensors on them. Lots of ML-assisted tools for automating detection and analysis is being introduced and used.

stevehawk 3y ago
> The other is privacy. True in the aviation world. I've noticed that most people under, say, 50 or so, like ADS-B (airplanes broadcasting their location) for the safety reasons. But most of the pilots over 50 will say "It's just the government coming up with another way to track you."
- jMyles 3y ago
  I'd love to hear a genuine argument from someone, of any age, who is anti-ADS-B. I don't understand the impetus to allow someone to fly a massive, deadly hunk of metal over a community without clarifying their telemetry to that community. I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law enforcement is now exempt from this requirement in some situations.
  - arminiusreturns 3y ago
    > I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law enforcement is now exempt from this requirement in some situations. Black helo's off ads-b for the purposes of intimidation are totally a thing and I agree wholeheartedly.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    Food for thought: what about driving a massive deadly hunk of metal through a community?
    - vladms 3y ago
      To progress in the same direction: what about having a static deadly hunk of metal at second floor of your house? The point I am trying to make: most of things flying seem more dangerous (higher speed, higher reach, different fuel) than cars.
      - nerdponx 3y ago
        > most of things flying seem more dangerous And yet somehow flying is safer than driving! As a sibling comment mentions, a lot of that has to do with all of the safety controls in place. My point is that driving at modern speeds in modern vehicles is actually pretty dangerous, even if not as dangerous as aviation, and yet we as a society exercise very little oversight over the activity. There are good reasons to not have "ADS-B for cars", mostly related to privacy. Unlike flying, many people heavily rely on cars to carry out their day-to-day activities. But I think it's at least worth thinking about.
        pc86 3y ago
        Commercial aviation is safer than driving. General aviation is no safer than riding a motorcycle, and may be even more dangerous, so it is definitely not safer than driving. And the people complaining about ADS-B are going to be almost exclusively grumpy old guys flying around in J3 cubs.
- ericbarrett 3y ago
  There's some yahoo who buzzes my house twice a week in a Cessna (coming and going). He's often under 500' AGL. No ADS-B and haven't gotten a tail number yet. I think it should be illegal to not have it enabled, for exactly this kind of thing. In fact I wonder if it's even a licensed pilot—William Bushling apparently flew for 20 years without a current FAA license and also didn't use ADS-B; when he finally lost the dice game it took them days to find the wreckage: https://youtu.be/69NvK6YbNtg https://youtu.be/69NvK6YbNtg
  - peterleiser 3y ago
    Try contacting local small airports for information. Also, flight plans are apparently public record and available upon request.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - knodi123 3y ago
      Flight plans are not required if you're just out flying VFR. Someone who doesn't like ADS-B probably also doesn't call uncle sam and tell him where he plans to fly.
  - kridsdale1 3y ago
    Have you tried a super long telephoto lens? If you got like 100 photos in a row you might be able to use some kind of software to blend them and infer the number.
    - ericbarrett 3y ago
      It's only been a couple times a week on random days and times; I'd basically have to camp on my roof to catch them. And they're going full tilt (at least 90 knots) so there's only 5-10 seconds of opportunity. I do have a pretty good long lens on my digital camera, maybe I'll set it up and have it by the door.
  - callalex 3y ago
- throw0101d 3y ago
  > But most of the pilots over 50 will say "It's just the government coming up with another way to track you." Not wrong, but the tracking is to help with reducing collisions. That said: * https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy You need to go with 1090ES(-only), and not the 'consumer focused' UAT, though.
mistrial9 3y ago
> unfortunately not always enforced in a good way guess there is the corruption issue?
- TrackerFF 3y ago
  Since I've observed a bunch of countries directly, it is more the following: - Fisheries may not (historically or present day) be a huge part of their economy, and has therefore been neglected for years. - Not enough infrastructure due to economic neglect. - Huge revolving door of officials. One month you deal with one person, six months its another one. You don't know if they are real professionals, or someone placed there (party stooge, nepotism, you name it). - No cooperation between fisheries/marine agencies, and navy/police/coastal guard. - And, yes, some corruption I'd assume. I have a concrete example: We were invited to a developing country to assess their systems, and consult them on how to move forward. They were/are losing millions and millions due to illegal trawling. Arrive at the HQ, which was a run down office where a handful of people were working. All data was shared via excel spreadsheets, no real systems to work on, lots of paper forms that someone had to digitize. Someone looking at MarineTraffic from time to time. That's the state of some of these countries. The illegal fishers are long out of their EEZ before anyone can react.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    >All data was shared via excel spreadsheets, no real systems to work on, lots of paper forms This can be very efficient if you spot check people from time to time, and simply cut the hands off of anyone found to be violating the law. Tell people to calculate and pay their own taxes too, with the same punishment if they falsify stuff. That's how Afghanistan dealt with opium farmers before 2001, and it was amazingly effective.
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      certainly there is a place for medieval law enforcement in this day and age however, one (of many) problems is that the poachers make more money than the employed bureaucrats .. step 2 - follow the money
notahacker 3y ago
(Also worked on this area for a bit) There are EU regulations requiring fishing vessels over 15m to use AIS (the UK also abides by these) so within Europe the standards are reasonably consistent. Regulations are considerably more relaxed or less effectively enforced in other jurisdictions which is reflected in the data; it's possible the 98% of all fishing vessels operating off Thailand without AIS are all legal. But given the reputation of larger vessels operating in that region for slavery, perhaps not. Agree there are privacy-related reasons why you might ideally not want competing vessels seeing which waters you fish, but AIS alone doesn't tell anyone whether it's any better than other waters (and fishermen have no shortage of other data points to plan their activity or other boats to follow if they really don't have any better heuristics). Regulatory evasion is rife even in effectively-regulated areas not least because the industry is convinced some of the regulations are actually wrong, especially when it comes to localised quotas. You knows there's an issue when a former operator of a commercial fleet in Europe tells you candidly, that their skippers (who are all tracked by AIS/VMS) would definitely expect any catch logging system to allow them to lie about which points on their voyage yielded most of the fish....
- bjornbsm 3y ago
  I have worked with some catch logging data, and there is certainly some weird stuff in some of the data that points to something like that (but super interesting to untangle and figure out, from a personal perspective). It really is a game of finding clear, understandable regulations, but at the same time put a lot of work into checking whether they are upheld.
sandworm101 3y ago
>> Satellites with NAV/marine radar detectors are in orbit. Ya, they are called spy sats. For the better part of a century, very smart people have been funded by people with very deep pockets to track ships at sea that don't want to be tracked. If anyone thinks their startup sat company is going to start tracking ships with passive radar, they are entering a very very mature field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ocean_Surveillance_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ocean_Surveillance_Syste... >> The Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) is a series of signals-intelligence satellites that have conducted electronic signals intelligence for the U.S. Navy since the early 1970s.[1] The first series of satellites were codenamed "White Cloud" or "PARCAE", while second- and third-generation satellites have used the codenames "Ranger" and "Intruder". And for anyone saying "well, our sats are going to be in lower orbit" ... that has been done too. If you ever read about satellites powered by nuclear reactors, those were low-orbit radar sats looking for ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Mature yet commercially opaque I assume? That seems like a good business model tbh, an existing bench of talent (likely under paid) and an established science and technology, that’s of broad interest to many companies, NGOs, and governments.
  - dr_orpheus 3y ago
    This is essentially Hawkeye360's business model and to a lesser extent Aurora Insight. Both are satellite based analytics of RF signals. Hawkeye360 specifically lists Maritime Domain Awareness as one of their focuses: https://www.he360.com/solutions/maritime-domain-awareness/ https://www.he360.com/solutions/maritime-domain-awareness/
- TrackerFF 3y ago
  Yes, the military (intelligence) community have had these capabilities - and more - for quite some time. Some of the same capabilities are being released for "non-military" use, which just means that regulatory agencies etc. can get the same data for non-military ops. But, as someone who's working on exactly that, it is not easy - and there's a lot of red tape to wade through. The data gets filtered by the military, and then you get whatever scraps are left. Scans/passes of areas with too much military activity tend to be off-limits. A big threat is that people could start to fingerprint radar signatures, which in turn isn't ideal if you're a, say, navy or intelligence ship. Not that your adversaries (read: China, Russia, etc.) probably don't have that exact type of data, but it's just standard practice to minimize exposure.
mschuster91 3y ago
> Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to have certain sensors on them. Yeah but as long as no one dares to stand up to the worst offenders - particularly China, who have been under fire for years from their neighborhood in the Philippines [3] all the way to Africa [1][2] - with actual navies to stop and either seize or sink non-compliant ships all of this will be in vain. The open sea is the last remaining place on Earth where darwinism in its purest form still rules. Might makes right... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/how-chinese-trawlers-are-emptying-west-african-fishing-grou/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people... [2] https://www.voanews.com/a/fishy-business-report-details-chinese-fleet-s-illegal-operations-in-west-africa-/6519387.html https://www.voanews.com/a/fishy-business-report-details-chin... [3] https://apnews.com/article/china-canada-philippines-illegal-fishing-9a352568c1370e30920ecdcf27dc9e87 https://apnews.com/article/china-canada-philippines-illegal-...
reactordev 3y ago
As a sailor, it was infuriating when I would come across a container ship or some grain hauler with their AIS turned off. Luckily I have other safety systems in place but damn is that a buzz kill at 3am on a new moon night. Also another reason you would turn off AIS is if you are hauling precious cargo and don’t want pirates to know your whereabouts. I know this sounds cliche but it’s true. Cargo vessels traveling near pirate activity will often “go dark” to avoid detection and dealing with a Capt. Phillips situation. So yeah, it’s difficult to get a fix on just how many vessels are out there, big or small. I’ve seen a lot of weird designs and contraptions out at sea.
SergeAx 3y ago
Couple of years ago we were relocating my friend's sailboat from Croatia to Mallorca. During my night watches I routinely saw how Italian fishing vessels nearby Calabria turning their AIS off and on, despite local law mandates it to be on during the night.

stevehawk 3y ago

> The other is privacy. True in the aviation world. I've noticed that most people under, say, 50 or so, like ADS-B (airplanes broadcasting their location) for the safety reasons. But most of the pilots over 50 will say "It's just the government coming up with another way to track you."

jMyles 3y ago
I'd love to hear a genuine argument from someone, of any age, who is anti-ADS-B. I don't understand the impetus to allow someone to fly a massive, deadly hunk of metal over a community without clarifying their telemetry to that community. I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law enforcement is now exempt from this requirement in some situations.
- arminiusreturns 3y ago
  > I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law enforcement is now exempt from this requirement in some situations. Black helo's off ads-b for the purposes of intimidation are totally a thing and I agree wholeheartedly.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Food for thought: what about driving a massive deadly hunk of metal through a community?
  - vladms 3y ago
    To progress in the same direction: what about having a static deadly hunk of metal at second floor of your house? The point I am trying to make: most of things flying seem more dangerous (higher speed, higher reach, different fuel) than cars.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      > most of things flying seem more dangerous And yet somehow flying is safer than driving! As a sibling comment mentions, a lot of that has to do with all of the safety controls in place. My point is that driving at modern speeds in modern vehicles is actually pretty dangerous, even if not as dangerous as aviation, and yet we as a society exercise very little oversight over the activity. There are good reasons to not have "ADS-B for cars", mostly related to privacy. Unlike flying, many people heavily rely on cars to carry out their day-to-day activities. But I think it's at least worth thinking about.
      - pc86 3y ago
        Commercial aviation is safer than driving. General aviation is no safer than riding a motorcycle, and may be even more dangerous, so it is definitely not safer than driving. And the people complaining about ADS-B are going to be almost exclusively grumpy old guys flying around in J3 cubs.
ericbarrett 3y ago
There's some yahoo who buzzes my house twice a week in a Cessna (coming and going). He's often under 500' AGL. No ADS-B and haven't gotten a tail number yet. I think it should be illegal to not have it enabled, for exactly this kind of thing. In fact I wonder if it's even a licensed pilot—William Bushling apparently flew for 20 years without a current FAA license and also didn't use ADS-B; when he finally lost the dice game it took them days to find the wreckage: https://youtu.be/69NvK6YbNtg https://youtu.be/69NvK6YbNtg
- peterleiser 3y ago
  Try contacting local small airports for information. Also, flight plans are apparently public record and available upon request.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - knodi123 3y ago
    Flight plans are not required if you're just out flying VFR. Someone who doesn't like ADS-B probably also doesn't call uncle sam and tell him where he plans to fly.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  Have you tried a super long telephoto lens? If you got like 100 photos in a row you might be able to use some kind of software to blend them and infer the number.
  - ericbarrett 3y ago
    It's only been a couple times a week on random days and times; I'd basically have to camp on my roof to catch them. And they're going full tilt (at least 90 knots) so there's only 5-10 seconds of opportunity. I do have a pretty good long lens on my digital camera, maybe I'll set it up and have it by the door.
- callalex 3y ago
throw0101d 3y ago
> But most of the pilots over 50 will say "It's just the government coming up with another way to track you." Not wrong, but the tracking is to help with reducing collisions. That said: * https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy You need to go with 1090ES(-only), and not the 'consumer focused' UAT, though.

mistrial9 3y ago

> unfortunately not always enforced in a good way guess there is the corruption issue?

TrackerFF 3y ago
Since I've observed a bunch of countries directly, it is more the following: - Fisheries may not (historically or present day) be a huge part of their economy, and has therefore been neglected for years. - Not enough infrastructure due to economic neglect. - Huge revolving door of officials. One month you deal with one person, six months its another one. You don't know if they are real professionals, or someone placed there (party stooge, nepotism, you name it). - No cooperation between fisheries/marine agencies, and navy/police/coastal guard. - And, yes, some corruption I'd assume. I have a concrete example: We were invited to a developing country to assess their systems, and consult them on how to move forward. They were/are losing millions and millions due to illegal trawling. Arrive at the HQ, which was a run down office where a handful of people were working. All data was shared via excel spreadsheets, no real systems to work on, lots of paper forms that someone had to digitize. Someone looking at MarineTraffic from time to time. That's the state of some of these countries. The illegal fishers are long out of their EEZ before anyone can react.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  >All data was shared via excel spreadsheets, no real systems to work on, lots of paper forms This can be very efficient if you spot check people from time to time, and simply cut the hands off of anyone found to be violating the law. Tell people to calculate and pay their own taxes too, with the same punishment if they falsify stuff. That's how Afghanistan dealt with opium farmers before 2001, and it was amazingly effective.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    certainly there is a place for medieval law enforcement in this day and age however, one (of many) problems is that the poachers make more money than the employed bureaucrats .. step 2 - follow the money

notahacker 3y ago

(Also worked on this area for a bit) There are EU regulations requiring fishing vessels over 15m to use AIS (the UK also abides by these) so within Europe the standards are reasonably consistent. Regulations are considerably more relaxed or less effectively enforced in other jurisdictions which is reflected in the data; it's possible the 98% of all fishing vessels operating off Thailand without AIS are all legal. But given the reputation of larger vessels operating in that region for slavery, perhaps not. Agree there are privacy-related reasons why you might ideally not want competing vessels seeing which waters you fish, but AIS alone doesn't tell anyone whether it's any better than other waters (and fishermen have no shortage of other data points to plan their activity or other boats to follow if they really don't have any better heuristics). Regulatory evasion is rife even in effectively-regulated areas not least because the industry is convinced some of the regulations are actually wrong, especially when it comes to localised quotas. You knows there's an issue when a former operator of a commercial fleet in Europe tells you candidly, that their skippers (who are all tracked by AIS/VMS) would definitely expect any catch logging system to allow them to lie about which points on their voyage yielded most of the fish....

bjornbsm 3y ago
I have worked with some catch logging data, and there is certainly some weird stuff in some of the data that points to something like that (but super interesting to untangle and figure out, from a personal perspective). It really is a game of finding clear, understandable regulations, but at the same time put a lot of work into checking whether they are upheld.

sandworm101 3y ago

>> Satellites with NAV/marine radar detectors are in orbit. Ya, they are called spy sats. For the better part of a century, very smart people have been funded by people with very deep pockets to track ships at sea that don't want to be tracked. If anyone thinks their startup sat company is going to start tracking ships with passive radar, they are entering a very very mature field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ocean_Surveillance_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ocean_Surveillance_Syste... >> The Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) is a series of signals-intelligence satellites that have conducted electronic signals intelligence for the U.S. Navy since the early 1970s.[1] The first series of satellites were codenamed "White Cloud" or "PARCAE", while second- and third-generation satellites have used the codenames "Ranger" and "Intruder". And for anyone saying "well, our sats are going to be in lower orbit" ... that has been done too. If you ever read about satellites powered by nuclear reactors, those were low-orbit radar sats looking for ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Mature yet commercially opaque I assume? That seems like a good business model tbh, an existing bench of talent (likely under paid) and an established science and technology, that’s of broad interest to many companies, NGOs, and governments.
- dr_orpheus 3y ago
  This is essentially Hawkeye360's business model and to a lesser extent Aurora Insight. Both are satellite based analytics of RF signals. Hawkeye360 specifically lists Maritime Domain Awareness as one of their focuses: https://www.he360.com/solutions/maritime-domain-awareness/ https://www.he360.com/solutions/maritime-domain-awareness/
TrackerFF 3y ago
Yes, the military (intelligence) community have had these capabilities - and more - for quite some time. Some of the same capabilities are being released for "non-military" use, which just means that regulatory agencies etc. can get the same data for non-military ops. But, as someone who's working on exactly that, it is not easy - and there's a lot of red tape to wade through. The data gets filtered by the military, and then you get whatever scraps are left. Scans/passes of areas with too much military activity tend to be off-limits. A big threat is that people could start to fingerprint radar signatures, which in turn isn't ideal if you're a, say, navy or intelligence ship. Not that your adversaries (read: China, Russia, etc.) probably don't have that exact type of data, but it's just standard practice to minimize exposure.

mschuster91 3y ago

> Countries are hammering through laws that force ships to have certain sensors on them. Yeah but as long as no one dares to stand up to the worst offenders - particularly China, who have been under fire for years from their neighborhood in the Philippines [3] all the way to Africa [1][2] - with actual navies to stop and either seize or sink non-compliant ships all of this will be in vain. The open sea is the last remaining place on Earth where darwinism in its purest form still rules. Might makes right... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/how-chinese-trawlers-are-emptying-west-african-fishing-grou/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people... [2] https://www.voanews.com/a/fishy-business-report-details-chinese-fleet-s-illegal-operations-in-west-africa-/6519387.html https://www.voanews.com/a/fishy-business-report-details-chin... [3] https://apnews.com/article/china-canada-philippines-illegal-fishing-9a352568c1370e30920ecdcf27dc9e87 https://apnews.com/article/china-canada-philippines-illegal-...

reactordev 3y ago

As a sailor, it was infuriating when I would come across a container ship or some grain hauler with their AIS turned off. Luckily I have other safety systems in place but damn is that a buzz kill at 3am on a new moon night. Also another reason you would turn off AIS is if you are hauling precious cargo and don’t want pirates to know your whereabouts. I know this sounds cliche but it’s true. Cargo vessels traveling near pirate activity will often “go dark” to avoid detection and dealing with a Capt. Phillips situation. So yeah, it’s difficult to get a fix on just how many vessels are out there, big or small. I’ve seen a lot of weird designs and contraptions out at sea.

SergeAx 3y ago

Couple of years ago we were relocating my friend's sailboat from Croatia to Mallorca. During my night watches I routinely saw how Italian fishing vessels nearby Calabria turning their AIS off and on, despite local law mandates it to be on during the night.