ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Researchers to use 'big data' to predict sea crimes

Researchers using artificial intelligence and "big data" plan to develop new algorithms that they say will enable them to identify, locate – and eventually predict – crimes committed in the world's oceans, from illegal fishing off the Patagonia shelf to drug smuggling in Central America to slave labor and human trafficking in the Indian Ocean. The perpetrators of these illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) activities collectively use vessels called "the dark fleet," not just because of their criminal activity, but because they try to hide their location by turning off their GPS tracking systems and navigating between legally operating and visible boats. "IUUs include all kinds of terrible things," said James Watson, a marine scientist expert at Oregon State University, and a principal investigator on the project. "We came into this thinking primarily about illegal fishing, but that turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. It is much, much bigger."