Passive georeferencing: A promising approach for finding probable fishing grounds

Abstract

Fishery management can benefit greatly from the use of geographic information system tools for habitat mapping, georeferencing fish catch and fishing effort data, and linking catch to oceanographic and biochemical parameters. As exploratory fishery resource surveys are time-consuming and expensive, landing centre-based surveys are frequently used in India to estimate the marine fishery resources. But it is challenging to map the habitat of the resources in such surveys as the resources seen at the landing centre are not geo-tagged. Passive georeferencing refers to the process of determining the geographical location of an object or entity using external information without actively transmitting any signals and is useful in situations where active transmission may not be desirable or feasible, and it allows for effective tracking and positioning without relying on active participation from the object being located. In this paper, the application of passive georeferencing approach for finding probable fishing grounds has been discussed along with its pros and cons and concluded with the way forward