GCRF Blue Communities Research Programme -

Please note: due to the completion of the project, this website is now in archive status. Visit the new Blue Communities legacy website here for final outputs and any future updates.

17 June 2020

By Drs Andrey Kurekin, Dan Clewley & Peter Miller, Plymouth Marine Laboratory

Marine resources are the main source of food for local communities in the South East Asia region.

Over-exploitation of these resources, inefficient management and insufficient support of sustainable development may result in the depletion of fish stock, degradation of marine ecosystem, causing direct threats to food security and livelihood of local coastal communities.

In Project 7 we use Earth Observation (EO) data for monitoring aquaculture sites and coastal regions. A new methodology has been developed that applies Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar data for detection of aquaculture structures, fishing corrals and traps in coastal areas (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Coastal structures detected from space

The methodology has been tested in Taytay Bay and Malampaya Sound in the Philippines, providing unique information about seaweed farms, fish traps and grouper cages. An example of satellite image of fish traps is given in Figure 2.

Figure 2. A satellite image of traps and farms in the waters of Malampaya, Philippines.

We used this methodology to build the first map of aquaculture structures in Palawan, Philippines. Over 130 satellite images were processed to cover Palawan's coastal waters, extending for 15km from the baseline. More than 1500 objects were detected in this area and their locations were recorded. The historical maps of Palawan aquaculture sites were built in the years 2016 and 2019 that allowed us to trace aquaculture objects in time.

For validation and exploitation of this new EO product, we actively involve Western Philippines University and other Blue Communities projects.

Habitat Mapping

Maps of habitats are important for a number of other projects within Blue Communities, such as Project 3 (Ecosystem impacts) and Project 8 (Probabilistic decisions). While there are some existing maps available, including global datasets, high resolution maps reflecting the current status of habitats were needed and using EO data allows the generation of maps, which fulfil project requirements.

We have been using EO data from Sentinel 2 to produce maps showing current location and extent of habitats, namely mangroves, coral and sea grass (Figure 3). Different habitats display different spectral signatures and we use this information within a classification algorithm to produce maps. Existing maps and in situ measurements collected by project partners are used to train the classification and validate resulting maps. An advantage of this approach is it can be applied to imagary from different dates to generate habitat maps from different years.

Monitoring aquaculture sites from space

17 June 2020

Figure 1. Coastal structures detected from space

Figure 2. A satellite image of traps and farms in the waters of Malampaya, Philippines.

Habitat Mapping

Project 7 introduction

Other recent newsletter articles

Understanding the benefits of one-by-one tuna fisheries

Capacity building through Coronavirus

Investigating marine governance innovations in UNESCO marine reserves