Submission deadline extended to 7/19/2023!

Challenge Overview

Seafood is one of the most widely traded commodities in the global food market. More than a third of the world’s population relies on fish and other seafood as a primary source of protein in their diet, and an estimated 520 million people make their livelihoods through fishing or fishing-related activities.

Unfortunately, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is a major contributor to overfishing worldwide. These activities pose a threat not only to fragile marine ecosystems, but also to food security in coastal communities and regional stability more broadly. The illegal fishing trade has been linked to organized crime, and human rights violations are common when fishing operations are conducted without regulatory oversight.

Fisheye Logo

NGO FishEye International is a nonpartisan organization charged with understanding the social, political, and economic forces that drive the illegal fishing trade. They have spent the past several years collecting data, which they hope will help them to form a more comprehensive picture of this evolving threat… but they need your help!

In mid-April, FishEye International plans to make several of their datasets available to the public, along with a series of questions surrounding illegal fishing and its broader impacts. They’re asking the Visual Analytics community to help them make sense of this often-conflicting data, and to make recommendations for how to proceed.

Mini-Challenge 1: Contextualize Data

Analysts at FishEye International are committed to stopping illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and protecting marine species that are affected by it. As part of their work, FishEye collects online news articles about fishing, marine industry, and international maritime trade. To facilitate their analysis, FishEye uses a natural language processing tool to extract the names of entities (people and businesses) and the relationships between them. Can you help them make sense of the extracted data?

Please visit VAST Challenge 2023: Mini-Challenge 1 for more information and to download the data.

Mini-Challenge 2: Identify Patterns

The country of Oceanus has sought FishEye International’s help in identifying companies possibly engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Using visual analytics, can you help FishEye identify companies that may be engaged in illegal fishing?

Please visit VAST Challenge 2023: Mini-Challenge 2 for more information and to download the data.

Mini-Challenge 3: Detect Anomalies

FishEye International has been given access to an international finance corporation’s database on fishing related companies. In the past, FishEye has determined that companies with anomalous structures are far more likely to be involved in IUU. Can you help FishEye develop a new visual analytics approach to better understand fishing business anomalies?

Please visit VAST Challenge 2023: Mini-Challenge 3 for more information and to download the data.

Grand Challenge: Competing Narratives

FishEye International is committed to using all resources available to it to stop illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Tie the other datasets together to build a richer story. Each data source may lead investigators to a different conclusion and FishEye is interested in using visual analytics to highlight conflicting narratives across datasets.

Please visit VAST Challenge 2023: Grand Challenge for more information and to download the data.

VAST Challenge 2023