Clustering 'Dark Fleet' Fishing Activity

How can we detect illegal 'Dark Fleet' fishing?

The objective of this analysis is to find hidden patterns in vessel behavior. Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing often involves vessels turning off automatic identification system (AIS) trackers or moving in erratic patterns to avoid detection. By processing geospatial data, using K-Means clustering to segment vessels into groups based on their movement patterns, we'll be able to identify anomalous clusters vs normal fishing behavior. The analysis includes: unsupervised learning (clustering), geospatial data handling, visualization, and pattern recognition. The two datasets used are from the Global Fishing Watch organization, specifically their Anonymized AIS Training dataset, and Welch et al. (2022).