Skylight at the 2025 UN Ocean Conference

Skylight brings AI-powered tools and satellite data to strengthen global efforts in protecting our ocean. At UNOC 2025, we're showing how real-time intelligence helps partners detect and deter illegal fishing, strengthen enforcement, and advance sustainable ocean governance.

Join Us at These Sessions

The Role of Criminal Justice in Ocean Governance

Blue Zone — Tuesday, June 10, 2:00–3:15 p.m.

Hosted by UNODC, this high-level session explores how criminal justice and law enforcement are essential to achieving ocean sustainability goals. Ai2's Senior Director of Conservation, Ted Schmitt, will share how AI intelligence helps strengthen enforcement and coordinated responses to ocean crime.

Building MCS Capacities at CMAR

Green Zone — Wednesday, June 11, 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

Natali Giomi - Partnership Manager for Latin America & the Caribbean - will speak on how Skylight and the JAC are strengthening regional ocean governance in the Eastern Tropical Pacific through tools, training, and real-time collaboration. The session will highlight practical successes like Panama’s recent enforcement action.

Joint Analytical Cell (JAC) Evening Reception

Magnolia Café — Tuesday, June 10, 6:30–8:30 p.m.

An invitation-only gathering bringing together partners, government leaders, and the ocean conservation community to share insights, celebrate impact, and explore new collaborations. The evening will feature success stories from JAC’s global work and live demos of tools including Skylight, Marine Manager, and Vessel Viewer.

Enforcing the High Seas: Technology and Global Cooperation

International Commission Pavilion — Wednesday, June 11, 3:00–4:00 p.m.

Skylight joins IDDRI, Global Fishing Watch, UNODC, and others to examine how AI, transparency, and multilateral coordination are accelerating the promise of the BBNJ Treaty.

Partner With Us

Skylight is not just a tool—it’s a community. We're working with governments, scientists, nonprofits, and funders to build the next generation of marine intelligence and planetary protection.

Connect with us at UNOC

We will be in Nice throughout the week of June 9th.

Turn your Data into Impactful AI

Through the Earth System platform, you can apply AI beyond vessel detection to broader issues facing our oceans and coastal communities.

By integrating multimodal foundation models, planetary-scale datasets, and scalable infrastructure, Earth System is designed to support a wide range of Earth observation applications. We invite others to build on this work, apply these models in new contexts, and help shape the future of ocean insight through shared tools and open collaboration.

If you have the data and domain insight, we can bring the tools and infrastructure to help you turn that vision into a working solution.

Help us Certify the Next Generation of Ocean Leaders

We have a free online, certification course in how to use Skylight and analyze AI applied to fisheries monitoring and remote-sensed data more broadly. We're seeking partners to bring credibility, visibility, and global reach to this effort.

Sign up to be a co-accreditor

Impact Through the Joint Analytical Cell (JAC)

Skylight is a member of the JAC, a unique collective of organizations that provides maritime authorities with high quality fisheries intelligence, technology, data analysis and capacity building to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU). But JAC's role goes far beyond enforcement—it’s about smarter ocean governance.

137 km offshore — and Skylight sees it. Captured by Sentinel-2C, this image of a purse seiner far off Madagascar's coast was identified using Skylight’s advanced computer vision models. These detections help marine enforcement teams protect vast ocean areas with greater precision and speed.

Our Latest Technological Capabilities - All Provided At No-Cost

Expanded Satellite Coverage and Revisit Rates

With greater coverage and more frequent observations from sources like Night Lights, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and our newest integration of Landsat 8–9, Skylight provides a clearer and more continuous view of maritime activity—including in regions that have historically been difficult to monitor.

On average, we offer free satellite-based visibility over coastal EEZs every 2–4 days, and over open-ocean EEZs every 6–12 days.

We process 1.9 terabytes of satellite imagery daily and detect approximately 290,000 vessels per week—or 1.3 million per month—across public imagery sources alone.

We are also the only organization to open-source our vessel detection models across VIIRS, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and Landsat 8–9. We invite you to incorporate these models into your own platforms and research because accelerating ocean insight requires shared tools, open collaboration, and collective innovation.

Non-AIS Vessel Detection

Skylight is performing better than ever along coastlines and inland waterways, surfacing activity from vessels not broadcasting AIS. These capabilities are already supporting real-world decision-making and coordination, including work featured in our new Frontiers article on integration with EarthRanger.

Fishing Detection - Even More Real-Time

The time between an AIS vessel detected to be fishing via AI to receiving an alert on Skylight is now as low as 15 minutes. In Argentina, authorities used this event to intercept illegal activity happening in their EEZ.

Partner Integration with Global Fishing Watch

Skylight now includes additional vessel data from Global Fishing Watch when filtering and surfacing suspicious events. The interface also provides direct links to theirs and Trygg Mat Tracking's Vessel Viewer for seamless access to additional information for maritime investigations.

Case Study

Protecting the Biggest Marine National Park System in Africa

Recent News

Allen Institute For AI pledges $3 million to accelerate the use of AI to address illegal fishing

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