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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.

Sec. Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and Living Resources

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1576779

A novel framework for identifying fishing grounds from AIS data containing vessels of unknown types

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Merchant Marine College, Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, China
  • 2 College of Transport and Communications, Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, Shanghai, China
  • 3 Kedge Business School, Talence, Aquitaine, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    To address the issue of precisely identifying fishing grounds in vast sea areas, this study proposes a framework that includes a fishing behavior detection model and a fishing ground identification model, considering vessels of unknown types. The absence of information regarding unknown vessels can result in incomplete identification of fishing grounds, which in turn leads to regulatory oversight, and these unidentified fishing areas might be hotspots for illegal fishing activities. Identifying these missing fishing grounds is crucial for enhancing regulatory efforts and for vessels go through these areas to plan their routes more effectively in advance. This helps in finding illegal fishing and optimizes the operational efficiency of fishing vessels. Firstly, the Speed-Direction-Based Stops and Moves of Trajectories (SDB-SMOT) algorithm is proposed. Based on this algorithm, a fishing behavior detection model is developed to identify fishing activity trajectories from AIS data that encompasses vessels of unknown types. Subsequently, an algorithm that integrates the Data Field and OPTICS (DF-OPTICS) algorithm is proposed, and a model for identifying fishing grounds is constructed based on the DF-OPTICS algorithm. The efficiency and effectiveness of this framework are validated by identifying fishing grounds from AIS data that contains both fishing vessels and vessels of unknown types in the South China Sea. The Davies-Bouldin Index of DF-OPTICS algorithm reached 0.267, 0.224, 0.203, the Silhouette Coefficient Index reached 0.560, 0.598, 0.633 and the Calinski-Harabasz Index reached 2213939, 3296101, 4320688 under three sets of hyperparameters. This framework not only bridges the gap in identifying fishing grounds from AIS data containing vessels of unknown types but also improves the efficiency of the fishing ground identification process.

    Keywords: AIS data, hot spots, Vessels of unknown types, SDB-SMOT algorithm, DF-OPTICS algorithm

    Received: 03 Mar 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Huang, Kong, Zheng, Chen and ZHOU. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Changhai Huang, Merchant Marine College, Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, China
    JINGEN ZHOU, Kedge Business School, Talence, 33405, Aquitaine, France

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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