Application of Artificial Intelligence in the Study of Fishing Vessel Behavior

Monitoring and understanding the behavior of fishing vessels are important in facilitating effective management, preventing illegal fishing, informing fishing grounds and evaluating effects of harvests on fishery resources. In recent decades, a large quantity of real-time data of fishing vessels have become available with the development of vessel-tracking systems, making it possible to study the behavior of fishing vessels in high spatial and temporal resolutions. To effectively and efficiently deal with the large amount of data, algorithms from artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly applied in the study of fishing vessel behavior. In this paper, we first introduce the various data sources for studying fishing vessel behavior and compare their pros and cons. Secondly, we review the AI methods that have been used to monitor and extract the behavior of fishing vessels from big data. Then, studies on the physical, ecological and social mechanisms affecting the behavior of fishing vessels were synthesized. Lastly, we review the applications of fishing vessel behavior in fishery science and management.