Ending hide and seek at sea
Abstract
The ocean remains the least observed part of our planet. This deficiency was made obvious by two recent developments in ocean governance: the emerging global movement to create massive marine protected areas (MPAs) (1) and a new commitment by the United Nations (UN) to develop a legally binding treaty to better manage high-seas biodiversity (2). Both policy goals cause us to confront whether it is meaningful to legislate change in ocean areas that we have little capacity to observe transparently. Correspondingly, there has been a surge in interest in the potential of publicly accessible data from automatic ship identification systems (AIS) to fill gaps in ocean observation. We demonstrate how AIS data can be used to empower and propel forward a new era of spatially ambitious marine governance and research. The value of AIS, however, is inextricably linked to the strength of policies by which it is backed.
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Supplementary Material
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References and Notes
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Science
Volume 351 | Issue 6278
11 March 2016
11 March 2016
Copyright
Copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Published in print: 11 March 2016
Acknowledgments
We thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Benioff Ocean Initiative, and NSERC for support; K. Gjerde, F. Joyce, P. DeSalles, A. Guerra, and B. S. Mitchell for comments/advice; and ORBCOMM and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission for data access. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of any affiliated institution or company.
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