An open tender to provide a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) for Australian waters has been won by Icelandic tech company Trackwell. The new system is expected to manage thousands of commercial fishing vessels under Commonwealth, selective state and territory fisheries within the Australian EEZ.
Trackwell’s VMS will support the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and partner agencies to ensure continuous compliance with fisheries management regulations.
AFMA is responsible for the efficient management of Commonwealth fishery resources on behalf of the Australian government, which monitors all fishing vessels authorised to operate in Commonwealth waters that surround the Australian continent. Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) encompasses 8.2 million square kilometres to include remote offshore territories and 2 million square kilometres of the Australian Antarctic Territory, thereby making it the third largest EEZ in the world, behind France and the United States.
Through open tender procedures for the provision of a Vessel Monitoring System and on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia, AFMA awarded Trackwell the contract for the transition and continued management of Australian-flagged commercial fishing vessels utilising Trackwell’s highly advanced VMS platform.
‘This was the next logical step for Trackwell as we aim to become a leading provider of vessel monitoring systems worldwide. The contract expands our operations to the Indian and Southern Oceans, further extending and strengthening our presence in the Pacific,’ said Trackwell CEO Jón Ingi Björnsson, commenting that Trackwell VMS will provide AFMA with monitoring and alerting options for thousands of commercial fishing vessels required to carry an operational VMS unit. It will allow AFMA and its partner agencies (both state and federal) to continue to monitor vessel movements and use the positional data received from the system to analyse the vessels’ behaviour, for both law enforcement and resource management purposes.
The VMS will track Australian-licenced fishing vessels wherever they operate. Messages will be exchanged with other state and regional fishery offices in accordance with regulations and bi-lateral agreements. Some examples of automatic monitoring tools that the VMS platform will provide AFMA include the timely reception of position reports and the detection of fishery regulation breaches.
‘We selected Trackwell due to their offer of a comprehensive and price-competitive system. Our operations call for continuous development, and the Trackwell system provides the flexibility that meets our diverse requirements,’ commented AFMA VMS manager Jeremy Thuell.
The system will maintain compatibility with current MTU (Mobile Transceiver Unit) hardware installed on each vessel monitored by AFMA while accommodating new MTU solutions endorsed for use by each state and territory fisheries agency. The system will also support future integration and compatibility with the FLUX (Fisheries Language for Universal Exchange) system to assist and support the distribution of fisheries-related data to e.g. regional fisheries management organisations (RFMO).
‘This contract is a big stepping stone for Trackwell, as it provides the opportunity to work closely with AFMA monitoring the third largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world. We are looking forward to this collaboration as we further develop our system to handle the diverse environments of the waters surrounding Australia,’ said Trackwell maritime director Kolbeinn Gunnarsson.
