Analysis of Fishing with Led Lights in and around Indonesian Marine Protected Areas and No Take Zones through Vessel Monitoring System and Visible Infrared Radiometer Suite Data

Abstract

Marine Protected Areas (MPA) and No Take Zones are an effective tool for marine ecosystem preservation. Illegal fisheries can severely harm these areas. Indonesia requires fishing vessels larger than 30 gross tons to use a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), which is able to track a vessel's geographic location at any given time. Another way to detect fisheries is through Visible Infrared Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) data which detects led light using fishing vessels from space by detecting lights at night time. This research focuses on comparing VMS and VIIRS data in order to identify lights from fishing vessels that were detected through VIIRS. In order to do this an R package, "LLFI" (Led Light Fisheries Identifier) was created. This package provides several R-function that can calculate the location of VMS using vessels at the overpass time of the VIIRS satellite. Several MPA across the Indonesian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) were chosen as research areas. VMS and VIIRS data for the entire year of 2018 were obtained for these Regions of Interest (ROI). The R-function "vms2viirs" calculated activity for small purse seine fisheries all through the ROI and for Bouke ami fisheries in the south western part of the ROI. The R-function "vms2viirsanalysis" created three buffers (Class A = 500 m, Class B = 1000 m, Class C = 5000 m) around detected fishing vessels by the VIIRS satellite and linked the closest found vessels from the VMS data set. The amount of identified vessels for Class C was significantly higher than those for Class A and B. Approximately 10% of all detected led lights could be identified with a ship number from the VMS data set. Only around 8% of identified vessels could be found in MPA and around 3% could be found in a No Take Zone. Paths of identified vessels that some vessels did cross MPA and No Take Zones, but it is not clear whether these vessels were actively fishing over there. Almost no vessels were identified in ROI with large purse seine fisheries. It can be concluded that the LLFI package is working successfully. However, since many led light using fishing vessels have a weight of less than 30 gross ton, it must be noted that those vessels cannot be identified yet. An increase of VMS usage in Indonesian (small scale) fisheries is therefore recommended.