23/10/2024 20:13 (UTC)
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latam marine resource management
- Date: 23/10/2024 17:01 (UTC)
- Credit: EFE
- Source: EFE
- Topic: Environmental issue » Conservation
San José, Oct. 23 (EFE).- The Marine Manager technological tool, developed by Global Fishing Watch (GFW), is revolutionizing marine resource protection and management in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador. By processing vast datasets—ranging from species telemetry to fishing activity—it enables enhanced safeguarding of protected marine areas.
The platform is an interactive map that utilizes artificial intelligence, big data, scientific input, and user contributions to provide a comprehensive view of the sea. This includes animal telemetry, which tracks the movements of marine species such as sharks, whales, and turtles. It also incorporates environmental layers to visualize underwater mountains, corals, and mangroves.
The platform also includes oceanographic information, such as sea temperature and oxygen concentration, to better understand how climate change affects marine ecosystems. It also monitors fishing activity to detect vessel movements and even potential illegal activities.
“Marine Manager emerges as a mega-platform that allows us to visualize all these different layers of information interactively. This enables the managers of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to monitor and better understand what is happening in these zones,” explained Global Fishing Watch's leader for Latin America, biologist Monica Espinoza, in an interview with EFE.
“Creating an MPA is a huge step, but managing, maintaining, and monitoring them is the big task that follows. Marine Manager supports these efforts by the states,” she added.
The Eastern Tropical Pacific
In 2004, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador created the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Conservation Corridor (CMAR), a unique global initiative that promotes the conservation and sustainable use of an area covering over 2 million square kilometers. These countries now use the interactive map to manage their marine resources more efficiently and in a coordinated manner.
Through the Marine Manager portal, CMAR administrators collectively identify areas of interest, improving coordination and information exchange.
This effort also supports the goals of the global 30x30 agreement, which aims to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 to halt the rapid loss of species and protect vital ecosystems.
During the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, held from October 21 to November 1 in Cali, Colombia, CMAR countries will share their experience and success in using these technological tools to protect marine ecosystems and species.
Concerns about marine conservation
Regional cooperation initially focused on protecting Malpelo and Gorgona Islands (Colombia), Coiba Island (Panama), the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador), and Cocos Island (Costa Rica). However, due to growing concerns about marine conservation, protection has expanded to new areas.
In recent years, the number of marine protected areas has increased from four to ten sites, with stronger safeguards and better connectivity for multiple species. This includes Colombia’s Yuruparí-Malpelo Integrated Management District and Northern Pacific Lomas and Hills Integrated Management District, Costa Rica’s Bicentennial Marine Management Area, and Ecuador’s Hermandad Marine Reserve.
A notable success has been the management plan for Cocos Island, as the Costa Rican government received input from Global Fishing Watch to design the plan with specific measures and use the Marine Manager tool for control and surveillance.
As a result, the Cocos Marine Conservation Area “has generated its own information and has been able to identify that in the first half of 2024, apparent fishing effort (total amount of fishing activity) in the protected area decreased by 91%,” Espinoza said. EFE
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(photo) (video)
EFE collaborated with Global Fishing Watch for this content.
- Date: 23/10/2024 15:32 (UTC)
- Credit: EFE
- Source: EFE
- Author: Jeffrey Arguedas
- Topic: Environmental issue » Conservation
Photograph of a screen displaying the monitoring of protected marine areas, during an interview with EFE conducted with biologist Mónica Espinoza, LATAM leader of Global Fishing Watch, on October 3, 2024, in San José (Costa Rica). EFE/ Jeffrey Arguedas
- Date: 23/10/2024 15:32 (UTC)
- Credit: EFE
- Source: EFE
- Author: Jeffrey Arguedas
- Topic: Environmental issue » Conservation
Biologist Mónica Espinoza, LATAM leader of Global Fishing Watch, works on her computer during an interview with EFE on October 3, 2024, in San José (Costa Rica). EFE/ Jeffrey Arguedas
- Date: 23/10/2024 15:32 (UTC)
- Credit: EFE
- Source: EFE
- Author: Jeffrey Arguedas
- Topic: Environmental issue » Conservation
Biologist Mónica Espinoza, LATAM leader of Global Fishing Watch, speaks during an interview with EFE on October 3, 2024, in San José (Costa Rica). EFE/ Jeffrey Arguedas
- Date: 23/10/2024 16:29 (UTC)
- Credit: EFE
- Source: EFE
- Topic: Environmental issue » Conservation
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latin American marine resource management
San José, Oct. 23 (EFE).- The Marine Manager technological tool, developed by Global Fishing Watch (GFW), is revolutionizing marine resource protection and management in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador. By processing vast datasets—ranging from species telemetry to fishing activity—it enables enhanced safeguarding of protected marine areas.
The platform is an interactive map that utilizes artificial intelligence, big data, scientific input, and user contributions to provide a comprehensive view of the sea. This includes animal telemetry, which tracks the movements of marine species such as sharks, whales, and turtles. It also incorporates environmental layers to visualize underwater mountains, corals, and mangroves.
SHOT LIST: FOOTAGE OF MARINE MANAGER AND SOUND BITES OF GLOBAL FISHING WATCH'S HEAD OF LATIN AMERICA, BIOLOGIST MÓNICA ESPINOZA.
“Global Fishing Watch is an organization that seeks to advance ocean governance through greater transparency of human activity at sea. We do this through state-of-the-art technology, where we make available visualizations of what is happening in our oceans. These visualizations are all public and free to any user on the platform. This allows us to understand mainly the fishing activity, but we have also advanced to involve other activities such as maritime transport. And even more importantly, now that we are with this 30 for 30 initiative where we are seeking to protect 30% of our oceans, we have involved other data within the platform by designing the Marine Manager portal. This portal has oceanographic information such as sea surface temperature, chlorophyll, salinity, biological data such as movements and positions of important key animals, some of which are critically endangered, such as hammerhead sharks. We also have data on turtles, whales and other species that are important in terms of connectivity between different marine protected areas. This is how this platform allows and helps in the design, management and monitoring of marine protected areas, by involving different sources of information and making it accessible to those users who need it most when making decisions.”
“That these four countries have these offshore pelagic islands that have connectivity between them. Initially four areas were protected but with the generation of data, information and accessibility to them, it was possible to identify that these areas had to be expanded because the coverage of critical importance was much greater, since species are transported among them. There are migrations that are these spaces where there are submarine mountains, like mountains that we have on land but under the sea that allow us to make these marine corridors and it is important to expand not only these four areas, but also to create new ones. So the existing areas were connected and expanded. So it went from having four to 10 marine protected areas. And this is how these managers, apart from designing the areas, comes the even greater challenge, which is to implement them, to monitor and manage them. So this is where technology plays a very, very important role in our countries, in the Latin American region, by making this data and information available so that they can use it and through our training to generate inputs for their decision making and day-to-day work, as well as to see findings and understand this space that is so dynamic and variable according to what is currently happening with climate change and other activities.”
- Date: 23/10/2024 19:34 (UTC)
- Credit: EFE
- Source: EFE
- Topic: Environmental issue » Conservation
News content:
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latam marine resource management
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latam marine resource management
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latam marine resource management
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latam marine resource management
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latin American marine resource management
Global Fishing Watch transforms Latam marine resource management
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