Skylight provides additional vessel detection and imaging capabilities at no cost to national and regional agencies targeting Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing.

While, vessel detections from public sources (e.g., Sentinel-1, Landsat) provide significant visibility into vessel activity, the addition of commercial data can help close gaps and increase coverage.

If you have a use case where additional vessel detections or imagery could be helpful to compliance efforts, please reach out to your Skylight representative, Support (support@skylight.org) or Skylight's collection manager, Paige Roberts (paiger@allenai.org). We would be happy to discuss how we can support your use case. We take your operational security seriously, and will make a best effort to protect your privacy and operational schedules.

Capabilities introduction

Through a contract with Maxar, Skylight can task additional source of satellite imagery.

• Satellite Radar: TerraSAR-X, PAZ satellites Airbus via KSAT, and IceEye vis KSAT
• Radio Frequency (RF): Unseen Labs BRO satellites
• Optical Imagery (EO): WorldView-1,2,3, and GeoEye-1 satellites

The below sections outline how Skylight leverages these additional sources of satellite imagery to support IUUF compliance and enforcement.

Patrol planning

Skylight supports patrols and operations that have the intent, mandate, and jurisdictional authority to address Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUUF) by providing dark vessel detection capabilities at no cost.

Based on your requirements, we can put together a package of IUUF surveillance capabilities, potentially including satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR), radio frequency geolocation (RF), and high-resolution electro-optical imaging (EO).These capabilities are available by a simple request to your Skylight representative or Skylight partner contact.

Satellite Radar

The commercial Satellite Radar vessel detections include TerraSAR-X, PAZ satellites Airbus via KSAT, and IceEye vis KSAT

While the resolution of these satellites is higher than Sentinel-1, detail is not enough to infer vessel identification. 

The latency of vessel detections from Airbus is as little as 90 minutes, while the latency for IceEye detections typically ranges from 4-24 hours. As with any vessel detections, the latency can vary significantly. Transmission delays (ability for the satellite to pass the data to earth) is one such cause of latency variations. Failures may also occur.

Radio Frequency

Radio Frequency data is also available to detect those vessels using a navigational radar. Radiofrequency data does not include an image, only a frequency signal. 

How it works: Radio Frequency detections work by detecting a radio signal(s). While radio signals can come from a variety of sources, the data in Skylight is able to detect navigational radars. The signals from navigational radar are categorized as S-band and X-band. 8000-10000 MHz is indicative of X-Band Radar and 2000-4000 is indicative of S-Band Radar.

Vessels of many sizes carry X-band radar, but S-band typically indicates a larger vessel. S-band is a higher power, longer range radar used to help see through weather. Vessels may use multiple radar emitters, which can result in two or more detections.

RadioFrequency sensors can collect data from a single location multiple times a day (up to 8). Radio Frequency is not well suited to detect irregular signals (e.g. satellite phones) due to the very low probability a collection coincides with such signal emissions.

Latency: The latency is typically 8-24 hours though may be available in as little as a few hours.

Accuracy: Detections from Radio Frequency are unlike object detection remote sensors. Instead, the signal(s) captured from emitted (navigational) radar creates multiple ellipses of probability. The accuracy of detections are typically within 1km of the detection position in Skylight.

The Request Process

Request to Skylight

Skylight needs your request  at least one week before the data is needed

• Information needed for the request: 
• The intent of the operation
• The area(s) for the operation
• The dates of the operation
• Need for planning the operation or execution or both

Collection Plan

• The Skylight team will identify the best available data for your dates from both public and commercial satellite sources
• The Skylight team will contact you with the delivery plan

Delivery

• All available data will be delivered via the Skylight web-platform. This data cannot to integrated into other platforms.
• Users are expected to create alerts for expected vessel detections
• Skylight does not provide analytical support, but we’re happy to connect you with partners upon request

Imaging for Compliance and Enforcement

Thanks to near real time behavior detection and ability to task of satellites, Skylight is able to confirm or provide additional details of vessels and their behavior with high resolution imagery. This capability utilizes an initial signal (e.g., AIS-based event, vessel detection) to then attempt capturing imagery of the vessel(s). The imagery comes from Maxar's WorldView-1,2,3, and GeoEye-1 Optical imagery satellites

This service is available in the Skylight platform for agencies seeking to monitor for specific behaviors that represent a likely risk of IUUF.  The nature of high resolution data (high resolution, small collection frame) is not well suited to monitoring a specific area. 

Due to satellite availability, the often brief nature of vessel behaviors and challenges with environmental conditions (e.g., clouds), capturing an image is not always possible.  

The Process

Request to Skylight

Skylight needs one week to begin monitoring for the defined conditions

• A user and Skylight will work together to define conditions to then monitor for
• When conditions are met, Skylight will automatically attempt to collect additional imagery to confirm or add details to that behavior 

Delivery

• All images delivered in the Skylight platform
• Users are expected to create alerts that match the user-defined conditions allow users to quickly evaluate the imagery and respond as appropriate