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Comment by F00Fbug | Hacker News Reader

Your first point is really the issue. NOAA extrapolates catch information into overall health of the species and uses that to issue permits, set quotas, and adjust fishing seasons. Not only did I help build some of the ship-board systems, I built a ton of data analysis tools on the back-end for NOAA.

Red Snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example. NOAA will tell you we're devastating the species (boat captains would not agree!) and they adjust quotas and season start/stop dates based on catch info to help balance the business of fishing and the health of the species. It's a tough job because the captains are often at odds with the scientists.

It could be possible to sanitize the data and remove the position information, but they kind of need some general location to do some of the science.

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Thanks for your work on this.

This is important as fisheries globally are over-fished. The scale of the problem is not even known right now. Chinese fishing boats roam the globe taking fish for consumption in China and depleting stocks everywhere they sail including by fishing in marine sanctuaries.

Fish as healthy food has become a big deal in the last few decades and demand grows so the fish have to come from somewhere. If you don't protect your fisheries then collapse of global fish stocks will only be one more domino in the collapse of entire ecosystems.

I agree with this, but I really think the rationale for surveillance legislation like this is "all of the above." Some stakeholders are only interested in protecting marine resources, but others are in fact focused on identifying anglers who are poaching. See https://globalfishingwatch.org.

I have been on salmon charters in Alaska and Canada, and it is surprisingly easy for even a well-intentioned skipper to drift out of a legal fishing zone while tending to everything else happening on the boat. I'm not excusing those mistakes, but I can definitely understand their reluctance to carry surveillance units onboard.

It's a tough problem; all parties have strong arguments, but the interests aren't aligned. I do think there are some actionable areas most folks would agree on, like investing in measures to deincentivize rogue international fishing operations and bottom trawlers/dredgers.

> it is surprisingly easy for even a well-intentioned skipper to drift out of a legal fishing zone while tending to everything else happening on the boat

Skippers do have a lot to deal with, but I don't think it's asking too much of them to have accurate awareness and control of the position of their craft at all times.

If staying out of forbidden areas is difficult, then perhaps one could use a geofencing app that would work offline using GPS signals, which are generally easy to pick up on the water in good weather. You would input some boundary on a map, and the app will periodically check position and alarm if you've entered the forbidden area. I bet this is even a feature on marine navigation systems and even some watches.

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