Most of the 35-50 million people engaged in fishing are operating in coastal and inland waters. These fishermen use small boats, often operate at night, and are not required to use any form of track or log device to document their activities, which sometimes involves highly destructive fishing techniques such as blast fishing. Local governments often lack any form of enforcement capacity. Even where enforcement is available, it is constrained by limited personnel and financial resources. As a result, illegal fishing goes unnoticed or unenforced, which adds additional pressures to biologically sensitive marine ecosystems.

Marine Monitor (M2) provides a solution to addressing illegal fishing in protected waters by combining commercial off-the-shelf marine radar hardware with a custom M2 software solution to track boat activity and illegal fishing in nearshore waters (out to 4 miles). The M2 software has been integrated to work in tandem with an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, pan-tilt cameras, and unmanned aerial systems (UAVs) to further increase the visibility of activities within protected waters. These systems can be built at a fraction of the cost of traditional military-grade systems and can be deployed in a variety of configurations from trailers to rooftops and can run on limited electric power and communicate via low-bandwidth satellite internet.

M2 is committed to providing free software and hosting services, and partnering with local community groups, non-governmental organizations, and government organizations to deploy monitoring equipment, technology, and training globally that will make marine protected area enforcement more strategic and affordable to preserve marine ecosystems for future generations.