Wednesday, May 4, the Costa Rican Government entered into an agreement with technological platform Global Fishing Watch to improve the controls over illegal fishing.
The Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Environment and Energy hope to improve through this alliance with Global Fishing Watch the analysis and mapping of the activities in Costa Rican waters and the patters of fishing in Costa Rica’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

This is the result of the efforts carried out in the past four years to advance in the environmental security of the country, which includes the implementation of the National Strategy of Surveillance and Control, which includes the establishment of 5 nautical radars and the efforts to create a shared regional agenda in the topic of environmental security; for this purpose there have been public-private alliances with different organizations such as the association Costa Rica por Siempre.

“Global Fishing Watch was founded by Google, Skytruth, and Oceana in 2014. Their vision was to launch a transparency platform that would reveal the location and behaviors of commercial fishing fleets everywhere on the oceans through a freely accessible fishing activity map and processed data sets. The platform launched in September 2016 and ushered in a new era in fisheries management and market accountability”, explains Global Fishing Watch’s website.

The platform is partially funded by actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s eponymous foundation. Global Fishing Watch allows governments, fishery management organizations, researchers, and the fishing industry access to the information they need to protect critical marine habitats and make the oceans a more sustainable source of food for the world.

This agreement allows Costa Rica to take part of this platform and share information and data of the vessels monitoring system (VMS) publicly with said international organization.
Adam Reyer, CFO of Global Fishing Watch, commented, “Once you have this transparency and it becomes the norm, it is easier to spot the abnormalities, the inconsistencies that are not being transparent and it really holds other vessels accountable for being transparent, that is really the goal here to increase transparency in the country, in the region, ultimately in the world, and that will solve a lot of problems associated with illegal fishing, human rights, and security problems”.

The platform will allow the Ministry of Security and Coast Guard Service to have additional and more accurate information regarding the real location of the vessels in Costa Rican waters and take actions in situations that generate alerts.