Industrial Fishing Occupies a Third of the Planet

How do you study the world's more widespread predator? When a team of researchers set out to see how prevalent industrial fishing was around the world--who was fishing where and when--they were met with a dearth of information. They lacked access to vessel monitoring systems closely held by regional fishery managers, says Juan Mayorga, a marine data scientist from National Geographic's Pristine Seas project. And that information would have shown only pieces of the puzzle. To circumvent this obstacle, Mayorga and a team of researchers took a step back--way back--and tracked marine vessels from space, using satellites to learn where industrial fishing vessels fished and when.