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Prior to the Canada Day long weekend MDA announced it was awarded another contract from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in the governments efforts to fight illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing.
The contract follows a Feb. 2021 three year contract whereby MDA technology is being used “in support of the Government of Ecuador to monitor the protected ocean ecosystems surrounding the Galapagos Islands.”
This new contract is for two years and will cover the” Indo-Pacific region.” The government has the option to renew the contract for up to three years.
The contracts are part of the governments Dark Vessel Detection (DVD) program which “uses satellite technology to locate and track vessels whose location transmitting devices have been switched off, sometimes in an attempt to evade monitoring, control and surveillance” according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
In a press release MDA stated that “According to the United Nations, illegal fishing is the planet’s sixth largest crime. The Indo-Pacific region is home to the majority of the world’s coral reefs and includes the largest diversity of fish. MDA Maritime Insights platform, which leverages MDA’s world-renowned RADARSAT-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), combines multiple satellite data sources to track and identify IUU fishing activity including dark vessel detection. Together, they can see hundreds of kilometres in a single image, day or night and through all weather conditions, creating a powerful asset for combatting IUU fishing.”
The value of the contract was not released.
