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Information and understanding of fishing activities at sea are fundamental components of marine knowledge and maritime situational awareness. Such information is important to fisheries science, public authorities and policy-makers. In this paper we introduce a first map at European scale of EU fishing activities extracted using Automatic Identification System ship tracking data. The resulting map is a density of points that identify fishing activities. A measure of the reliability of such information is also presented as a map of coverage reception capabilities. ARTICLE HISTORY

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The improvement in Maritime Situational Awareness, the capability of understanding events, circumstances, and activities within and impacting the maritime environment, is nowadays of paramount importance for safety and security. The integration of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and automatic identification system (AIS) information has the appealing potential to provide a better picture of what is happening at sea by detecting vessels that are not reporting their positioning data or, on the other side, by validating ships detected in satellite imagery. In this letter, we propose a novel architecture that is able to increase the quality of SAR/AIS fusion by exploiting knowledge of historical vessel positioning information. Experimental results are presented, testing the algorithm in the specific area of Dover Strait using real SAR and AIS data.Index Terms-Automatic identification system (AIS), data fusion, Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA), ship detection, synthetic aperture radar (SAR).

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A system was set up to ingest automatic ship position reports (terrestrial and satellite AIS, LRIT) and fuse these into a Maritime Situational Picture, tracking the ships within an ocean basin-wide area of interest in real time. Trial runs were made over several months, collecting reporting data from a number of different sources, over the Gulf of Aden and the Western Indian Ocean. Also satellite radar surveillance was carried out in order to sample the presence of non-reporting ships. The trial showed that satellite AIS is a powerful tool for basin-wide ship traffic monitoring; that multiple AIS satellites are needed for sufficient completeness and update rate; and that coastal AIS and LRIT still provide essential complements to the satellite AIS data. The radar survey showed that about half of the radar-detected ships are not seen in the reporting data. The ultimate purpose of this work is to support the countries around the Horn of Africa in the fight against piracy and to help build their capacity to deliver maritime security and safety. http://www.transnav.eu the International Journal on Marine Navigation and Safety of Sea Transportation Volume 7 Number 2

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