Reply to: Caution over the use of ecological big data for conservation

For countries that have not adopted this practice, including Australia, models provide necessary estimates in lieu of official information. Since the publication of our paper1 there have been further improvements, including the recent data of AIS longline fishing effort for 2018 with updated gear assignments based on convolutional neural networks and data for more vessels. [...]an important question raised2 is whether the reclassification of the gear types of 47 vessels directly affects the calculations of fishing exposure and our conclusions. Within the Oceania region used in our paper, Western Australia comprises 2.2% and GBR 0.35%. [...]the areas comprising reclassifications provide a minor contribution to the spatial overlap and FEI values that we calculated not only globally but also within the Oceania region. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishers are known to target sharks-including tiger sharks9-for fins, an ongoing threat that has been a major problem in Australia's NWS7, which overlaps with the tiger shark hotspot8. [...]it cannot be discounted that the shark hotspot overlaps with non-AIS monitored fishing activity, especially as more than 0.5 million km2 of the NWS remains open to commercial shark fishing10.