By Atuna
The US based GeoEye Inc. won the contract to supply the fishery fleet of the Maldives -among them the tuna vessels of the traditional pole and line fleet- with their Vessel Monitoring Systems. The American provider of satellite and aerial-based geospatial information and services will deliver the VMS system that they developed for fisheries management and safety. Setting up a VMS system is one of the conditions in the assessment procedure for the Maldives pole and line tuna fishery to get the certification of the Marine Stewardship Council.
As part of this contract, GeoEye states it will build the secure infrastructure for a countrywide vessel monitoring system and supply ten Osprey Personal Track terminals for a trial deployment. GeoEye’s vessel monitoring system will display vessel positions and consolidate fish catch reports from the Osprey terminals in near-real-time for review by fisheries management personnel at the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture.
The vessel monitoring system also provides the customer with two-way text communication by satellite for both routine and emergency purposes.
Adam Manik, director of the Fisheries Development Services section at the Maldivian Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture said that GeoEye scored highest among the competing firms on their technical proposal and offered the most competitive price. The Osprey Personal Tracker terminals are manufactured by EMS Global Tracking and sold by GeoEye within the commercial and government fisheries sectors. These terminals report latitude/longitude (GPS) positions on a pre-programmed frequency using the Inmarsat global satellite constellation.