Require ships fishing on the high seas to broadcast their positions, and make their tracks public for anyone to see
Steps to make it happen
- Ships that fish or carry fish on the high seas must have a machine that reports where they are.
- The machine keeps sending the ship's location through satellites all the time.
- Anyone can see on the internet where a ship traveled and where it fished.
- When fish are moved to another ship at sea, a watcher or a camera must always be present.
- A ship whose location signal stops for no good reason cannot unload its fish at a port.
- Other countries help pay the costs for ships from countries that cannot afford the machines.
- People all over the world watch over the sea, and a sea where cheating is hard becomes normal.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This proposal covers fishing boats above a certain size that fish on the high seas, which belong to no country, as well as carrier and supply ships that bring fuel and food to fishing boats or receive the fish they catch. These ships would have to carry a position transmitter that is hard to switch off or tamper with, as a shared condition for fishing on the high seas. The position records would be kept by the international fishing management bodies that already set fishing rules in each sea area, together with a shared system run jointly by several organizations. After a delay of a few days, the ship's name, the country it belongs to, its track, and the area where it is believed to have been fishing would be made public in a form anyone can see. The delay is there so that information about good fishing grounds does not instantly reach other ships and create unfairness. Moving fish from one ship to another at sea would be allowed only if an independent observer is on board or a recording camera is working. If a signal is lost, a report after the fact is enough when there is a legitimate reason, such as a breakdown or passing through dangerous waters where pirates operate. But for a ship with unexplained gaps, the port that would receive its catch could refuse to let it unload. For ships from countries that find it hard to pay for the equipment and communication costs, the participating countries would give support from a joint fund.
BenefitsWrongdoing at sea becomes easier to see, and honest fishing is rewarded
When ship movements are public, fishing outside permitted areas and transfers made to hide where fish came from are left on record, so the very motive to cheat gets weaker. Monitoring is not left only to governments. Researchers, news organizations, citizen groups, and even companies that buy fish can see the same data, so many eyes can notice something strange even in wide seas that a limited number of patrol ships cannot cover. Combined with the system that lets ports refuse to unload, this makes it harder for illegally caught fish to enter the market, and it improves the situation in which fishers who follow the rules must compete against unfairly cheap fish. If the reality of ships that stay away from port for a long time becomes known, it can also be a chance to check how the crew are being treated. For coastal countries without enough budget to manage fisheries, it becomes a way to learn what is happening near their own waters, and they can make decisions about leaving fish stocks to future generations based on records instead of guesses. The data is also useful for studying fish migration and the ocean environment.
DrawbacksBurdens and secrets for fishers, and clashes with national authority
For fishers, information about where fish can be caught is a valuable asset built up through many years of experience. Even with a delay, if tracks are made public, patterns in fishing grounds can be read, and quite a few people object that this could favor large fleets with plenty of money. The cost of equipment and communication weighs more heavily on fishers with small profits, and if support does not reach them, only honest small businesses might end up leaving the business. Also, the idea that the country a ship belongs to has the authority to manage its own ships is a foundation of the international order, and some countries see a system that makes tracks public to outsiders or lets ports refuse to unload as damaging that authority. There is also a loophole: a ship can escape the duty by moving its registration to a country that does not take part. There are worries too that public position information could be misused by pirates and criminals, and that misreading the data could make an innocent ship suspected of wrongdoing and damage its reputation.
Learn the background
The high seas make up most of the ocean and belong to no country's territorial waters, so no single country can watch what goes on there. As a result, illegal and unreported fishing has continued: catching more fish than the set limits, fishing by ships without permission, and moving catches to other ships at sea so that no one can tell where the fish came from. This kind of fishing does not only reduce the number of fish. It also puts fishers who follow the rules at a disadvantage in price competition, and it takes away food and income from people living on the coasts. There are also reports of crew members on ships that do not return to port for months being forced to work long hours or being treated violently. Meanwhile, tracking ships by satellite and analyzing data have become cheaper and easier to get than before, and there are more cases of citizen groups and researchers studying ship movements and finding wrongdoing. International talks to protect life in the high seas are moving forward too, but a system for knowing who is doing what at sea, which is a basic requirement for protecting it, is still not good enough.
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-15d) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes