Australia, Pacific Islands sign IUU monitoring deal with HawkEye 360

Australia, Pacific Islands sign IUU monitoring deal with HawkEye 360

HawkEye 360 has signed a deal with Australia and the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency to help combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the South Pacific.

The Herndon, Virginia, U.S.A.-based satellite analytics company operates a constellation of 21 low-earth-orbit satellites that detect, geolocate, and characterize a variety of radio frequency signals used for navigation and communication.

HawkEye 360 has won a contract from Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for a pilot program to provide greater maritime domain awareness in support of the FFA, an organization representing 17 Pacific Island member countries in tuna resource management.

"The Pacific Islands encompass a vast and highly trafficked region with rich fisheries resources that present complex challenges for maritime domain awareness," HawkEye 360 Chief Growth Officer Alex Fox said. "We are proud to partner with the FFA, through support from the Australian government, to deliver a clearer picture of maritime activity that benefits all Pacific Island countries in their efforts to combat IUU fishing and respond to climate and humanitarian events."

HawkEye 360 will provide RF data, analytics, and training to identify illicit maritime activity, specifically, that is not detectable by automatic identification systems, which can be shut off on vessels engaged in potentially illicit activity. The contract falls within Australia’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), an initiative focused on providing shared technology, training, and insight into activity in three critical regions: the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean, supported by the Quad nations – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – a diplomatic network “dedicated to supporting an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”

As technology like that being developed by Hawkeye 360 becomes ever more sophisticated, vessels engaged in IUU fishing will have nowhere to hide, according to HawkEye 360 Marketing Vice President Adam Bennett

“AIS (Automatic Identification System) is the standard for monitoring,” Bennett said. “But when a vessel goes dark, that’s where our system becomes useful. We provide other means to monitor a vessel in your territorial waters.”

Having come online in 2021, HawkEye 360 is still ramping up its operations.

“We own all our infrastructure. We control everything in our system, from the satellites to the data processing and algorithms. This gives us high higher order of analytics that we combine with other data sources, such as AIS and vessel watch lists, to put it in context. Then we look where we can fill in the information gaps,” Bennett said.

Putting various pieces of the vessel traffic puzzle together, HawkEye 360 helps government agencies focus on certain vessels identified as potentially engaged in IUU behavior.

“Then they can determine when they need to send out a patrol vessel or take some other action,” Bennett said.

Bennett said when a vessel shuts down its AIS, HawkEye 360 often reads that as an indication that something illegal might be happening.

“We’re working with machine learning for our algorithms to enable us to distinguish between the vessels based on things like their radar frequencies, or other industrial equipment of interest. This will improve our ability to track them,” he said.

With its 21 satellites, HawkEye 360 can geolocate vessels every hour.

“But we have six more launching,” Bennett said. “Those will enable us to collect data as often as every half hour if the client wants that level of detail.”

HawkEye 360 has extensive ties to the United States national security community.

“We see IUU fishing as an important element of national security in a broader sense,” Bennett said. “If you have visibility of these vessels, you can monitor of activities of concern.”

Reporting by Paul Molyneaux

Photo courtesy of HawkEye 360