AIS Apparent Fishing Effort

Global Fishing Watch's AIS Apparent Fishing Effort dataset, version 3.0 (March 2025 release). Data is available for 2012 to 2024 and is based on positions of more than 190,000 unique automatic identification system (AIS) devices on fishing vessels, of which up to around 96,000 are active in a given year. Fishing vessels are identified via a machine learning model, vessel registry databases, and manual review by Global Fishing Watch and regional experts.

Vessel time is measured in hours, calculated by assigning to each AIS position the amount of time elapsed since the previous AIS position of the vessel. The time is counted as apparent fishing hours if the Global Fishing Watch fishing detection model, a neural network machine learning model, determines the vessel is engaged in fishing behavior during that AIS position.

Data are spatially binned into grid cells that measure 0.01 or 0.1 degrees on a side. The coordinates defining each cell are provided in WGS84 and correspond to the lower-left corner. Data are available in three formats: fishing hours by flag state and gear type at 100th degree resolution; monthly apparent fishing hours by flag state and gear type at 10th degree resolution; and fishing hours by MMSI at 10th degree resolution. The dataset is accompanied by a table of vessel information such as gear type, flag state and dimensions.

Free for non-commercial use. This static dataset covers 2012 to 2024. For more recent data, or for a custom area, use the Global Fishing Watch APIs or the gfwr (R) and gfw-api-python-client (Python) packages, linked below. Read the data caveats before interpreting results.

Simple

Date (Publication)
2025-08-04
Identifier
30e9cef6-9ee1-4f16-8a19-88eb1a7cf894
Credit
Global Fishing Watch
Point of contact
  GFW - Research and data inquiries
Point of contact
  GFW Support
Thèmes Sextant
  • /Human Activities/Industrial Fishing
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
  • Production and industrial facilities
Theme
  • AIS
  • Automatic Identification System
  • apparent fishing effort
  • fishing effort
  • commercial fishing
  • vessel tracking
Use limitation
CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons - Attribution, No commercial usage)
Spatial representation type
grid Grid
Metadata language
English
Character set
utf8 UTF8
Topic category
  • Oceans
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Begin date
2012-01-01
End date
2024-12-31
Unique resource identifier
EPSG:4326
Distribution format
  • CSV ( )

OnLine resource
Data Download Portal: AIS Apparent Fishing Effort (48 files, 2012-2024) ( WWW:LINK )

Download the static dataset, 48 files covering 2012 to 2024

OnLine resource
Datasets and Code: Apparent Fishing Effort ( WWW:LINK )

Method, limitations and access routes for the apparent fishing effort dataset

OnLine resource
Global Fishing Watch API documentation ( WWW:LINK )

Full reference for the Global Fishing Watch APIs

OnLine resource
Global Fishing Watch API access tokens ( WWW:LINK )

How to request and use an access token for the Global Fishing Watch APIs

OnLine resource
Data caveats ( WWW:LINK )

Known limitations of each Global Fishing Watch dataset. Read before interpreting results.

OnLine resource
Key concepts ( WWW:LINK )

Definitions and time coverage for each Global Fishing Watch dataset

OnLine resource
gfwr: R package for the Global Fishing Watch APIs ( WWW:LINK )

Install and usage guide for the gfwr R package

OnLine resource
Python package for the Global Fishing Watch APIs ( WWW:LINK )

Install and usage guide for the Global Fishing Watch Python package

OnLine resource
Global Fishing Watch data availability ( WWW:LINK )

Which datasets are available through the map, the APIs, the R and Python packages and the Data Download Portal

Hierarchy level
Dataset
Statement

AIS is a GPS-like device that large ships use to broadcast their position in order to avoid collisions. Each year, more than 400,000 AIS devices broadcast vessel location along with other information on vessel identity, course and speed. Ground stations and satellites pick up this information, meaning a ship’s movements can be followed even in the most remote parts of the ocean.

Every day we receive raw AIS data from our partner at Spire. These data are first run through a series of our algorithms designed to filter out corrupt or incomplete records and assign additional information to each AIS message, such as the distance from shore, depth and time since the vessel’s previous AIS position. At this point, the AIS data is ready to be used by our machine learning models.
File identifier
30e9cef6-9ee1-4f16-8a19-88eb1a7cf894 XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Date stamp
2026-10-09T14:08:48.456407Z
Metadata standard name
ISO 19115-3 - SEXTANT
Metadata standard version
1.0
Point of contact
  Ifremer - Sextant
ZI Pointe du Diable , Plouzane , Brittany , 29280 , France
https://sextant.ifremer.fr/eng
 
 

Overviews

overview
Global apparent fishing effort shown on the Global Fishing Watch map

Spatial extent

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Keywords

AIS Automatic Identification System apparent fishing effort commercial fishing fishing effort vessel tracking
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
Production and industrial facilities
Thèmes Sextant
/Human Activities/Industrial Fishing

Provided by

Access to the portal

Associated resources

Not available