Big Spy-Birds Find Illegal Fishing Boats

Albatrosses are now equipped with sensors to spy on fishing boats, thus helping the authorities to get rid of illegal fisheries in the south of the Indian Ocean where a quarter of the vessels operate illegally.

The project revealed itself to be a cheap form of surveillance that complements satellite monitoring as the birds relay the data in real-time. “We have shown that it is possible,” says Henri Weimerskirch at the French National Centre for Scientific Research who led the international team.

Strapped with sensors, the 169 albatrosses travel a great distance and are attracted to fishing vessels. Over the course of 18 months, the birds detected 353 boats in the region of which 25.8% had their Automatic Identification System, a device that avoids collisions, turned off which is a sign of illegality.