https://phys.org/news/2018-07-hot-fish-sea.html

"Because catches from different boats are mixed up during transshipment, we often have no idea what was caught legally and what wasn't," said Kristina Boerder, a Ph.D. student in Dalhousie University's Department of Biology and lead author on the Science Advances paper, published this week.

Transshipment can also facilitate human rights abuses and has been implicated in other crimes such as weapons and drug trafficking. It often occurs in the high seas, beyond the reach of any nation's jurisdiction, and where policy-makers and enforcement agencies may be slow to act against an issue they cannot see. By applying machine learning techniques to vessel tracking data, researchers are bringing unprecedented transparency to the practice.