Global Fishing Watch Map

Global Fishing Watch turns satellite-fed vessel data into a time-aware ocean map. Browse fishing-effort heatmaps, trace individual ships, compare boundaries and layers, and investigate what happened where—while remembering that apparent fishing is an algorithmic estimate, not a verdict.

What is Global Fishing Watch Map?

Start with a sweep of the world's oceans, choose an activity layer and a date range, then keep drilling: a busy grid cell can lead to named vessels, tracks, events and geographic context. The map also supports boundary overlays such as exclusive economic zones and marine protected areas, which makes patterns easier to interrogate than a plain ship-position plot. Its strongest trick is scale: a broad heatmap can become a single-vessel timeline without changing tools. The evidence needs careful reading, though. Apparent fishing is a model built from tracking signals and movement patterns, not a courtroom label.

What you can do there

• Browse fishing-effort and vessel-presence heatmaps
• Search for vessels and inspect tracks and events
• Compare activity across dates and geographic boundaries

Why we picked it

It makes a vast, otherwise abstract system legible without sanding off the uncertainty. The route from global pattern to one vessel's timeline encourages genuine investigation, and the mix of activity, event and boundary layers rewards both a quick curious scan and a much deeper dive.

How to get the most from it

Pick a region and a short date range first; the map is easier to read when you resist turning on every layer at once. Toggle an exclusive economic zone or marine protected area for context, click a busy grid cell to find active vessels, then open one track and follow its events through time. Create an account only if you need downloads or saved workspaces.

Good to know

The public map can be browsed without an account, but downloads and saved workspaces require registration. Data near the present can lag by about 72 hours. AIS coverage is uneven—especially for small vessels—and apparent fishing is an estimate, so do not interpret a dot or track as proof of illegal activity. Data use is subject to the project's stated non-commercial license.

Who made it, and when?

The earliest supported launch date we found is September 15, 2016.