A new long-range drone has been tested in Danish fisheries control and surveillance from April to mid-August 2023. Photo: EMSA
Testing of Long-Range Drone to Strengthen Fisheries Control and Surveillance in Danish Waters
A new long-range drone has been in the air in Denmark from April to mid-August 2023. The drone has been used to test how drones can be employed to enhance water monitoring, including fisheries control in Danish waters.
The drone, which was flown in North Jutland, has an operational radius of approximately 140 km from the coast and a mission time of about nine hours per day. During the test period, it flew from Tranum Klit and covered the sea area along the north and west coast of Jutland from Ålbæk Bay to Ringkøbing Fjord.
The Australian-produced drone is of the Textron Aerosonde type, with a wingspan of 370 cm and a weight of 36.4 kilograms. To get it airborne, it is launched from a catapult and is captured using a large net when it needs to land.
In the area of fisheries control, the testing included how data from drones can be used to verify if fishing is taking place in areas with fisheries restrictions, if there is illegal discarding of fish, and how to strengthen the selection and prioritisation of fishing vessels for physical fisheries control.
The selection of vessels for control is currently based on an analysis of data, including fishermen’s own reports in landing declarations and logbooks, data from other monitoring systems such as AIS and VMS, which monitor the physical location of vessels, as well as any previous violation history:
“In fisheries control, we currently use several satellite-based systems to monitor the fishing vessels operating in Danish waters. This way, we always have a complete overview of the geographic location of fishing vessels. Over the summer, we have been testing how a long-range drone can complement the data we have from satellite monitoring regarding the behavior of fishing vessels. With a drone, for example, one could quickly check and document whether there is illegal discarding of fish or fishing in prohibited areas such as Natura 2000 sites or specific fish spawning areas that are closed for fishing. The drone’s speed allows it to reach a vessel quickly for inspections. At the same time, it is difficult to hear and see from a distance. This means that a fishing vessel intentionally breaking the rules, for example, by using illegal fishing gear, cannot empty the nets into the sea before we arrive to document the violation,” explains Lone Agathon Jensen, Control Coordinator at the Danish Fisheries Authority.
When the drone is used for fisheries control, a fisheries inspector sits next to the pilot and guides the operators or follows the missions online through a web application.
The Danish Fisheries Authority participated in the drone test alongside the Danish Navy, the Danish Customs and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), which is an agency under the EU’s Transport Commission. The drone and the efforts to get it into the air are funded by EMSA and are part of a joint European drone project. In recent years, EMSA has developed a significant service where member states can request drone support for their maritime monitoring.
Read more about the drone experiment on the European Maritime Safety Agency’s website at https://www.emsa.europa.eu/
Source: Press Release
