UN High Seas Treaty needs disruptive technology to have impact
Increasing the amount of Marine Protected Areas is great. But how do we enforce them?
In 2021, the United Nations announced their goal to protect 30% of the world’s oceans completely by 2030. Now, under the new High Seas Treaty, the United Nations has moved to ring-fence off large amounts of international waters and prevent fishing there.
Up until now, the waters more than 200 nautical miles off any coast have been completely outside the legislative reach of any one country. Whatever ships did in the so-called “high seas” — once peaceful — has been fair game, including “freedom to fish”.
The high seas make up more than two-thirds of ocean territory, making rules about their protection essential to any serious global ocean conservation effort. They are largely inaccessible for artisanal fishers since they are so far off-shore, so when talking about fishing pressure in the high seas, we’re predominantly talking about large vessels and megatrawlers.
This High Seas Treaty, if enforceable, will mean that fishing vessels won’t be able to fish within specific designated areas. This will give those areas the time and space needed to recover from fishing and other associated pressures, like noise.
The idea is wonderful. The problem is how to make sure that fishing vessels don’t simply disregard the new rules.
Many existing marine protected areas (MPAs) — that are currently situated within individual countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and legislative jurisdiction — experience problems with keeping illegal fishers out. It will be even more difficult to protect areas that are located far out to sea.
“I was actually living on a sailboat, doing my research,” says Prof. Robert Steneck, a coral reef biologist based at the University of Maine who’s spent a lot of time close to marine protected areas. “I could see when the [marine protected area] managers left. Some of these places did not have any enforcement. Other places do pay people to patrol on a daily basis — that’s great. But as I observed, when they’re done [for the day], you see [fishing] boats going out right to these areas that are marked as protected areas and working.”
Some say that we can use satellite technology to keep track of vessels approaching MPA boundaries. The Automated Identification System (AIS) is a collision avoidance tool used by most ships on the high seas. Powered by satellites, it helps ships to keep track of each other.
The problem with AIS is that ships can simply flick a switch and they turn off this sophisticated system. When a ship “goes dark”, there’s no way to track them. It would be relatively easy for a ship to switch off their AIS, then enter a MPA and fish. And because there are sometimes legitimate reasons why a ship needs to switch off its AIS, a ship can plausibly deny that they have “gone dark” to enter a protected area and fish.
As yet, it’s mostly been marine scientists that have worried about this problem. But the solution could belong to a person with a completely different perspective, and leaning into the power of entrepreneurial thinking, disruptive new technologies and big data could yield the necessary results.
The European Union’s marine researchers have been storing massive amounts of ocean data in a huge database known as EMODnet since 2009. Up until now, these datasets have largely been used by university researchers. Now, in an effort to tackle the ocean’s major problems, the organisations that run the database are hosting a hack-a-thon in March 2023 in an effort to elicit the brainpower of innovators.
The idea is that people with ideas on how to conserve the oceans and those with technical skills or specific know-how are grouped together to develop disruptive innovative solutions using the EMODnet data. From 7 March onwards, interested participants have been meeting online and gathering in groups to tackle some of the ocean’s key problems.
On 27 and 28 March, the hack-a-thon will take place, completely online. The participants will develop a prototype in a bid to impress judges and there will be a prizegiving ceremony on 30 March.
That’s not to say that the groups that don’t win won’t be the ones who make a breakthrough. The organisers of the hack-a-thon are providing a series of calls and training sessions in the lead-up to the main event, where all the participants can learn about the wide range of data that EMODnet stores, which is all open-access. The groups that don’t win will continue to have access to the data after the hack-a-thon and can develop their project further, if they so choose.
The steps taken by the High Seas Treaty are important, but so far they are only theory. Disruptive technology and out-of-the-box solutions are needed if we are to patch up leaky holes in current marine protected area management and ensure that new designated conservation zones are not “paper parks”. Enforcement will be difficult, and patrols are expensive and often ineffective. The answer to this question could lie with innovators who — as yet — might be unaware of the problem. Hack-a-thons like EMODnet’s are only the beginning — we may already have the tools, locked inside large swatches of data, to solve this issue. Harnessing the innovative minds of entrepreneurs could unlock the answers, and it’s about time. The oceans have not a moment left to waste.
