New Tools to Cut Into Lawless Ocean Activities - Near or Far from Shore

Information is not always power, but can at least provide a path to impact on keystone environmental and societal challenges, including those related to seafood and particularly the global fishing trade.

Abuse of marine resources remains widespread, as this paper by Boris Worm and others in Science last January made clear: Global shark fishing mortality still rising despite widespread regulatory change.

Shark fins seized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (Photo by USFWS)

Nontheless, projects like Global Fishing Watch are making a difference, as I explored last January.

Now I’m happy to share an update posted by

Ian Urbina

, one of the most innovative investigative journalists I know. He made a prize-winning beat out of covering environmental and human-rights abuses in the world’s largely-ungoverned "outlaw ocean" beyond nation’s economic zones. But he and his team are also working on a new tool to help quickly clarify whether some activity spotted within a nation's waters violates its laws. Read his post here:

“Is That Legal?”

Is That Legal?

Here’s more on this tool and the other service-oriented tool kits developoed by this journalism project:

Outlaw Ocean tools

And if you missed our 2023 Sustain What conversation looking at the

The Outlaw Ocean Project

’s many dimensions, here it is: