Global Fishing Watch API
Modern, secure REST APIs to revolutionize the way we research and monitor human impacts across the world's ocean.
What do you want to build?
Our APIs enable automatic connection of our data and products to other systems so users can easily download and integrate our datasets, code, and models to power their own platforms.
By providing streamlined access to information on current fishing vessel activity, identity and history, we are helping create solutions for a resilient, sustainable ocean.
Pick a use case and we'll route you to the right datasets, endpoints, and runnable examples.
Map apparent fishing effort
Visualize where potential fishing activity is happening as map tiles or download a report for an area.
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Detect dark vessels
Identify radar-detected vessels exhibiting non-broadcasting or potential dark AIS behavior.
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Look up a vessel's identity
Resolve an MMSI, IMO or name across +40 public vessel registries and AIS self reported data.
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Find encounters & potential transshipment
Analyze when two vessels meet at sea, fishing-to-carrier and more
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Assess vessel risk
Pull fused indicators: AIS off events, authorizations and more.
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Bulk-export for analysis
Scale your analysis offline: Export worldwide activity data in bulk via CSV or JSON.
ExploreHarvesting big data from satellites and other sources
We combine tracking data from the publicly available automatic identification system (AIS) and integrate that with information acquired through vessel monitoring systems that are operated by governments and made available to us through partnerships that we secure. Both AIS and VMS combine global positioning with a transmitter to regularly broadcast vessel location.
Global Fishing Watch APIs are only available for non-commercial purposes.
They are used by researchers, governments and technology companies.