International fisheries enforcement management using wide swath SAR

The application of wide swath synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for surveillance of commercial fishing grounds can aid in the detection of illegal fishing activities and provide more efficient use of limited aircraft or patrol craft resources. Many nations have vast economic enterprise zones that cannot be monitored for fishing activities with the available patrol resources. This is particularly true for small Pacific Island nations, whose resources preclude any effective monitoring methods. With wide swath SAR, large ocean areas can be monitored on frequent revisit schedules, thus allowing detected ships to be observed and identified by patrols that are vectored on these targets from cuing derived from the SAR information.