Shippy now answers a question maritime analysts ask every day: what are the rules here?
Skylight and ProtectedSeas bring marine regulations into Shippy, Skylight's AI agent for maritime intelligence, the latest output of a growing partnership between the two organizations.
Seeing a vessel is one problem. Knowing whether it is allowed to be there is another, and the second has always been the harder one. Marine managed areas overlap, closures shift with the season, and the rules come from different authorities at local, national, and international levels. Skylight and ProtectedSeas are working together to close that gap, so what an analyst can see and what their organization can act on are finally the same thing.
Two datasets that belong together
ProtectedSeas' Navigator platform compiles ocean conservation regulations and protection measures into the most comprehensive resource of regulatory information on marine protected areas in the world: 32,500+ marine managed areas across 220 countries and territories, from national waters to the high seas. It is the only centralized location where this data exists in an organized, easy-to-digest format.
In September, Skylight worked with the ProtectedSeas team to bring Navigator's regulatory data into Shippy, Skylight's AI agent that lets users ask questions of live vessel and satellite data in plain language. The connection runs through a skill ProtectedSeas built and now maintains, tested against the questions its own analysts brought to the table. It is the first concrete output of a partnership that has been building for years.
Ask Shippy what the rules are
With the Navigator skill working alongside Shippy's existing skills for vessel tracks, satellite detections, and partner data, an analyst can ask what restrictions apply in the managed area a vessel just entered, or for fishing activity over the last 72 hours inside areas where fishing is prohibited, and get back a cited answer that places the activity next to the rules that govern it. Every answer links to the Navigator record on ProtectedSeas' platform, alongside the Skylight event it references. Importantly, as regulations often change, Shippy’s answers carry a reminder that regulations may have shifted since Navigator last recorded them and that the managing authority is the authoritative source. Where areas overlap, Shippy says so. Shippy surfaces what the regulations say and what the data shows. Whether a violation occurred is a judgment that stays with analysts and their organizations.
“Our users can see lots of boats fishing in the ocean. The golden question has always been ‘which are fishing illegally?’” said Namrata Kolla, Head of Skylight. “ProtectedSeas has brought the compliance community closer to actually answering that question by intersecting their regulatory data with Skylight’s vessel data. They are evaluating and operationalizing regulations with a rigor nobody else has matched.”
Expertise that travels
ProtectedSeas is committed to building awareness of, and engagement with, Navigator. This partnership serves that goal directly, putting Navigator in front of enforcement and monitoring teams around the world in the course of their daily work, with a link back to the legal sources whenever feasible.
"Navigator exists so that anyone making decisions about the ocean can find out what the rules actually are," said Virgil Zetterlind, Director, ProtectedSeas. "Putting that information in front of the analysts who watch vessel activity every day, at the moment they need it, is the kind of reach we built it for. Working with Skylight gets us there without asking those teams to learn a new tool."
ProtectedSeas owning the skill that speaks for its data inside another organization's agent is an early example of a pattern Ai2 is exploring more broadly: environmental organizations turning their domain knowledge into agents others can query, with every contribution attributed to its source. For an organization like ProtectedSeas, that is a way to extend expertise and leadership beyond the audiences it reaches today, on its own terms.
Skylight is continuing to grow Shippy's early adopter group, prioritizing teams doing operational monitoring, control, and surveillance work. Like the rest of Skylight, Shippy is provided at no cost to governments, regional fisheries bodies, and qualifying NGOs.
ProtectedSeas is an impact-driven organization that compiles ocean conservation regulations and protection measures, including MPAs, into the Navigator platform. ProtectedSeas is a program of the Anthropocene Institute. Skylight is a free maritime domain awareness platform from Ai2.
