MANILA – The Philippines will receive on Monday Canada’s dark vessel detection system that it could use for free for the next five years.

In an announcement on Saturday, the office of Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau said the state-of-the-art technology will support the Philippines’ maritime domain awareness and efforts to ward off illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUUF) within its sovereign waters.

“[The] Fisheries and Oceans Canada will deploy the system to multiple monitoring facilities in the Philippines as of November 20, 2023,” it said.

The Philippines and Canada formalized a deal that would include the Philippine National Coast Watch Center (NCWC) in Canada’s Dark Vessel Detection System on the sidelines of their 6th Joint Commission for Bilateral Cooperation in Ottawa on Oct. 12.

Philippine Ambassador to Canada Maria Andrelita Austria and Canadian Assistant Deputy Minister Adam Burns of the Programs Sector, Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) signed the Arrangement on the Dark Vessel Detection (DVD) System between NCWC and the DFO of Canada.

The DVD System is a program used to combat IUUF by vessels who deliberately turn off their Automatic Identification System.

The DFA said it utilizes layered multi-sensor satellite data from both commercial and government-owned satellite assets to provide near real-time satellite imagery.

It also incorporates historical vessel information, environmental data, and analytics to support and facilitate analysis.

The system will be jointly managed by the NCWC and Canada’s DFO (PNA)