Global Fishing Watch’s Open Ocean Project reveals all human activity at sea and enables meaningful impact through data and technology. As part of this effort, Deep-Sea Mining Watch—a collaboration between the UCSB Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory and Global Fishing Watch—provides a powerful portal for tracking potential deep-sea mining exploration or exploitation activity.
The portal continuously maps and monitors vessels engaged in deep-sea mining activities in regions containing International Seabed Authority (ISA) license areas, which span over 1.5 million square kilometers of the international seabed. As the ISA considers transitioning from exploration to exploitation, Deep-Sea Mining Watch aims to increase the transparency of the industry by informing stakeholders, while also raising awareness of the potential challenges, including biodiversity loss, overlap with fisheries, and transboundary impacts.
The portal empowers anyone to:
- Engage in near real-time monitoring of deep sea mining and exploration vessels. With access to AIS data from 2012 up to 72 hours ago, the platform allows you to watch vessel movements unfold over time and click any vessel to explore its history, which includes speed changes, depth, movement patterns and more.
- Filter what matters. The platform lets you cut through noise and focus on the regions, resources and activities most relevant to your work. You can filter vessel presence by:
- Regional license area: Focus on specific ISA region license areas. These regions include the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Northwest Pacific, Indian Ocean, South Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic as defined by ISA.
- Area type: Focus on each area type including exploration areas, areas reserved for developing states and areas protected for environmental interest.
- Contractor: Focus on areas by specific contractors holding exploration licenses in the region.
- Seabed mineral resource type: Focus on specific ISA license zones by seabed mineral resource type, including polymetallic nodules (PMN), polymetallic sulphides (PMS) and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts (CFC).
- Generate area insight reports. Whether you’re looking for a global snapshot or a detailed view of a single licensed block, activity reports make it simple to generate summaries at any scale. View a report summarizing activity specific to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
- Build and share your workspace. Save searches, track areas of interest and create custom reports. Share your workspace easily with colleagues for collaborative analysis.
- See the bigger picture. Overlay datasets to visualize overlaps between mining, fishing and other human activity. Understand how pressures interact across the ocean and spot potential conflicts.
View tutorial on how to analyze deep-sea mining vessel exploration activity.
For inquiries, please contact: [email protected]
