IPMA - News Detail

IPMA>Media Center>News

Fishing Fleet Monitoring

MONTEREAL project 2021-04-07 (IPMA)

MONTEREAL project - Fishing Fleet Real Time Monitoring, developed by IPMA with the support of the European Union Mar2020 Program, developed an integrated system of real time monitoring of the small fishing fleet.

Beginning 10 years ago, this project aimed to know small fishing activity, meaning is carried out by vessels less than 12 meters and represents 80% of the national fleet. This information is essential to manage not only the fleet, but also the resources and the entire ecosystem.

Monitoring consists in developing fleet tracking equipment, online visualization tool, data analysis and mapping software, aiming to know, for the first time, the fishing effort spatio-temporal distribution.

This system allows to understand the dynamics of the small fishing fleet, identifying the main fishing areas and to know the fishing effort by metier, essential information to the fleet sustainably management, fishing resources and habitats, as well as contributing to an intelligent management of maritime space.

At this moment, Montereal project monitors 83 vessels in the ganchorra fleet - art used to capture bivalves - between Vila Real de Santo António and Matosinhos.

The importance of this project was highlighted in a recent interview with IPMA´s coordinator and researcher, Miguel Gaspar, in which he detailed the project's objectives and future developments (see link below).