Vigía
Marine Conservation Intelligence for the Bahía de Todos Santos World Surfing Reserve
Executive Summary
Vigía is a public maritime intelligence platform that monitors vessel activity in and around the Bahía de Todos Santos World Surfing Reserve — a protected marine area off the coast of Ensenada, Baja California. The platform aggregates Global Fishing Watch satellite data against the reserve's geographic boundaries and surfaces vessel behavior, incursion events, and anomalies in a single public interface. No registration required. No expertise required.
Are vessels behaving in ways that threaten this protected area — and what is the evidence?
The Reserve
The Bahía de Todos Santos World Surfing Reserve is one of a small number of designated World Surfing Reserves globally — a recognition by the Save The Waves Coalition of exceptional surf ecosystems that warrant formal protection. The reserve encompasses the bay off Ensenada, Baja California, including internationally recognized surf breaks and the marine ecosystem that sustains them. The reserve faces ongoing pressure from industrial vessel traffic. Dark vessel events — satellite detections of vessels without active AIS transponders — occur at a rate consistent with deliberate signal suppression. Prior to Vigía, understanding the scope and pattern of vessel activity in the reserve required manual querying of Global Fishing Watch datasets — accessible only to researchers with data science capacity.
What Vigía Detects
Vigía ingests vessel activity data from the Global Fishing Watch API, stores it against the reserve's configured geographic polygon, runs detection logic against behavioral thresholds, and presents results through a public map interface updated on a six-hour ingestion cycle.
Vessels entering the WSR boundary polygon are logged as incursion events and scored 0–100 based on vessel class, duration, depth of penetration, and behavioral indicators.
SAR and optical satellite detections of vessels without concurrent AIS broadcasts are flagged. In the 90-day validation period, 64% of SAR detections had no AIS match — consistent with deliberate signal suppression.
Vessels present within or adjacent to the reserve boundary for more than two hours at speeds below three knots are flagged as loitering.
Cargo ships, tankers, and certain non-fishing vessel classes operating within the reserve polygon are flagged regardless of duration. Flags of convenience associated with industrial shipping are monitored.
Aggregated vessel presence data over rolling 90-day windows surfaces traffic patterns, peak activity periods, and repeat-offender vessels with three or more prior incursion events.
Data Validation
Before building the full platform, Esoteria validated GFW data availability and quality for the Bahía de Todos Santos study area.
11 AIS vessel records for a 30-day window. MEX flag dominant at 723 hours. MHL and PAN flags of convenience present at 164 and 49 hours respectively — consistent with industrial shipping activity.
7 of 11 SAR detections (64%) over 90 days had no AIS match — consistent with deliberate signal suppression.
Low apparent fishing effort — 3.5 hours across 2 grid cells over 90 days. Expected for a designated surf reserve. Baseline established for anomaly detection.
Governance Principles
Vigía operates under Esoteria's public intelligence governance framework.
Vigía outputs are public awareness and evidentiary record — not enforcement actions. The platform does not direct law enforcement or take any action beyond surfacing data.
All vessel data is sourced from Global Fishing Watch public datasets. No private vessel tracking or proprietary AIS feeds are used.
Detection thresholds, scoring weights, and flag definitions are documented publicly. Every scored event is traceable to the rule that produced it.
Conclusion
Marine protected areas cannot defend what they cannot see. The vessel activity threatening the Bahía de Todos Santos World Surfing Reserve is recorded in public satellite datasets. What was missing was the infrastructure to make that data visible to the people who need it.
Vigía is that infrastructure. It collapses the distance between satellite data and public awareness — converting raw AIS and SAR datasets into a legible, continuously updated intelligence interface that any conservation advocate, journalist, or community member can use without technical expertise.