Date of Award:

8-2024

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Computer Science

Committee Chair(s)

Mario Harper

Committee

Mario Harper

Committee

Vladimir Kulyukin

Committee

John Edwards

Abstract

Illegal fishing activities pose a significant threat to the sustainability of marine ecosystems and the economies and societies which rely on them. Detection of fishing vessels engaging in illegal activity is difficult, as many ships engaging in such activity actively avoid detection through radio systems used for maritime traffic monitoring. Satellite imagery provides a promising means for detecting fishing vessels, though designing an effective system is difficult due to limited availability of labeled image datasets of fishing vessels. This research proposes a system to detect illegal fishing activity through the use of a low-power ship detection satellite and proposes a decision-making process capable of analyzing ship movements and location to determine if a ship is engaging in illegal fishing. To overcome current limitations in available image datasets with labeled fishing vessels, this research proposes a new method for expanding existing image datasets to improve ship detection performance. The proposed illegal fishing detection system is further designed to be capable of weighing various social, economic, and ecological factors involved when determining a response to an incident of illegal fishing.

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388109d483afabdcff6cebf2ee65cfcd

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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