Germany based firm offers AIS vessel management tracking systems preventing IUU fishing
Germany based Weatherdock Cooperation, a world leader in small vessel tracking systems, offers its AIS technology as a tool against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU). Weatherdock says this is a well-known problem in capture fisheries that occurs both in high sea fisheries and in the exclusive economic zones of coastal States by national and foreign vessels and in river and inland fisheries.
In marine fisheries, while it is difficult to estimate precisely the total IUU catch in tonnage or value terms, the level of IUU fishing has reached major proportions for some species. These catches, in many cases, are being made by both authorized and non-authorized fishers. IUU fishing undermines national and regional efforts to conserve and manage fish stocks and, as a consequence, inhibits progress towards achieving the goals of long-term sustainability and responsibility. Moreover, IUU fishing greatly disadvantages and discriminates against those fishers that act responsibly, honestly and in accordance with the terms of their fishing authorizations. This is a compelling reason why IUU fishing must be dealt with expeditiously and in a transparent manner. How to get this phenomen under control?
The state of the art technology which is used to control, monitor and overcome the existing problems of IUU is a technology which is used at commercial vessels for traffic monitoring since 2000, which is a technology called “AIS”. “AIS” stands for “Automatic Identification System” for vessels.
AIS transponders, mounted on vessels, automatically transmit the position and velocity of the ship at regular intervals via a VHF radio built into the AIS. The position and velocity originate from an integral GPS receiver.
Other information, such as the vessel name and VHF call sign, is entered when installing the equipment. The signals are received by AIS transponders fitted on other ships or on land based monitoring systems.
In order to ensure that the VHF transmissions of different AIS transponders do not occur at the same time they are time multiplexed.
This “AIS” technology is also ideal to be used for monitoring small fishing vessels. A small simple transmitter, like the size of a smartphone, but slightly thicker transmits the actual position of the small fishing vessel. The transmitter is battery driven and can last before recharge up to 5 days. Alternatively it can also be connected to the battery of the vessel or the generator of the vessel.
With that device, the local authorities as the Boarder Guard, the Coast Guard of the Ministry of fishing can monitor the activities of the fisherman in the economic zones of the coastal states.
In addition, this system is also used an intelligent tracking system that fulfills all requirements for naval border security. Tracking and identifying objects are big needs for authorities and to know “friend or foe” will minimize terror risks.
As an example – Malaysia has got such a system already in use with products from Germany, from the company Weatherdock. Malaysia did decide for these devices due to reliability, high end technology and certification expertise these devices do have.
About Weatherdock AG
Weatherdock Cooperation, Germany founded in 2003 is now a world leader in small vessel tracking systems based in VHF and AIS-SART personal locator beacons for lifejackets. Weatherdock in 2016 was named among the best 100 midsize companies in Germany.