Company behind Canadarm helps fight illegal fishing in the Galapagos Islands

The company behind the Canadarm is using its satellite technology to help track and catch illegal fishers in the Galapagos Islands.

Mike Greenley, chief executive officer of MDA, spoke to CTV's Your Morning on Monday about how the company's tech is being put to use to help stop illegal fishing, an issue that costs the global seafood industry as much as US$50 billion a year.

Some estimates suggest up to one-in-five fish taken from the ocean comes from illegal fishing.

"So it's a huge impact on our economy and, of course, a very large impact on the oceans, which we're always trying to regulate and manage," Greenley said.

"We don't want people just swooping up all the fish."

MDA announced in February 2021 that it had been awarded a three-year contract with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, as well as the Department of National Defence's Defence Research and Development Canada, to use satellite technology to detect illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Known as the Dark Vessel Detection program, the technology locates and tracks vessels that have turned off their automatic identification and vessel monitoring systems, otherwise referred to as going "dark."

Greenley says MDA operates radar-based earth observation satellites, and works with partners that use other types of satellites that can measure radio signals from sources such as satellite phones and radars, to track ships from space.

Artificial intelligence looks at the behaviour of a given ship to determine if it's engaging in illegal fishing.

That information is then shared to the Ecuadorian government's naval command centre so the proper authorities can interdict the illegal vessel.

"If you know you're being watched all the time from space then that's a deterrent, and then we can use it to allow them [countries] to use their navies or their air forces to vector in and get people out of there," Greenley said.

Watch the full interview with Mike Greenley at the top of this article.