Albacora Group in Bizkaia (Bilbao), northern Spain, is testing a wideband satellite communications system onboard its tuna fishing vessel Albatun Dos with much success. The company has the largest commercial tuna fishing fleet in Europe, operating in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.
The system allows the fleet to use the same computer applications onboard vessels as on land, improving management of its daily operations.
"Controlling the vessel's fishing is improved to comply with the norms of management of different regional fisheries management organizations (RMFOs) and to fight against IUU fishing," said Imanol Loinaz, Albacora's fleet director. "Albacora favors greater control of ship operations and supports measures for the management of fishing grounds."
A three-month field trial was conducted onboard Albatun Dos in the Indian Ocean and completed on 23 March. The technology was developed by Stratos Global Corp., a leading global provider of advanced mobile and fixed-site remote communications solutions.
"These communications are improvements as much for the business as for the crew with the videoconferencing system and greater security for medical processing in case of emergency," he said.
Using fish-finding programs CatSat and SeaStar, the speed and functionality of FleetBroadband helped Albatun Dos locate tuna more efficiently by transmitting higher data volumes than with the previous system.
"The data transmission speed over FleetBroadband is very fast. It is also constantly connected, which allows us to download information in real time," said Pablo Abaroa, captain of Albatun Dos. "The vessel's operations have definitely been enhanced by FleetBroadband, because we can now download fishing data more quickly, and thus save fuel and time."
April 2, 2009
