When Fishing Vessels 'Go Dark'

Fishing vessels 'go dark', when they switch off their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). They must be doing this to stop themselves being tracked. The Oceana NGO looked at vessels 'going dark' between January 2018 and April 2021, within 20 nautical miles of the border between Argentina's national waters and the high seas (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/02/fishing-fleets-go-dark-suspected-illegal-hunting-study). Oceana found that 800 vessels switched off their AIS, between these dates, in this location. These boats were mainly members of giant distant-water fishing fleets, mostly from China. Based on the time they were untracked, the vessels could have been involved in a total of 900,000 hours of illegal fishing for highly-prized squid. This kind of illegal activity makes conservation of marine populations almost impossible.