Global Fishing Watch APIs

Use in your agent

Load Global Fishing Watch vessel identity records into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 4, 2026.

Access

• Register for a free non-commercial API token at globalfishingwatch.org/our-apis/tokens.
• Send it as an Authorization: Bearer header; the snippet reads GFW_API_TOKEN.

Request

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GFW_API_TOKEN" -g 'https://gateway.api.globalfishingwatch.org/v3/vessels/search?query=7831410&datasets[0]=public-global-vessel-identity:latest'

Format

JSON with an entries array of vessel-identity records (ssvid, imo, shipname, flag, geartype, registry matches) and metadata on which registries matched.

Load into pandas and Parquet

Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.

"""Global Fishing Watch vessel identity search -> pandas -> Parquet. Needs a free non-commercial API token."""
import os
import requests
import pandas as pd

TOKEN = os.environ["GFW_API_TOKEN"]
URL = "https://gateway.api.globalfishingwatch.org/v3/vessels/search"
params = {"query": "7831410", "datasets[0]": "public-global-vessel-identity:latest"}
r = requests.get(URL, params=params, headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}"}, timeout=60)
r.raise_for_status()
entries = r.json().get("entries", [])
df = pd.json_normalize(entries, sep=".")
df.to_parquet("gfw_vessel_search.parquet", index=False)
print(len(df), "matching vessel-identity records")

Needs a personal API key; not run.

Limits

• 50,000 requests per day and 1,500,000 per month per user, enforced across all of that user's tokens.
• Exceeding a limit returns HTTP 429 and blocks access for 24 hours (daily) or 30 days (monthly).

Quirks

• Every v3 endpoint needs the Bearer token, including search and public datasets.
• datasets[] and includes[] use repeated bracketed query parameters, which need an unencoded [ ] request (curl -g).
• Dark-vessel and encounter endpoints are separate from vessel identity search.

Terms and attribution

• "The Services are available for noncommercial use only in accordance with the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, including complying with the attribution requirements set forth in Section 3 below."
• Attribute as "Powered by Global Fishing Watch." linked to globalfishingwatch.org, or the documented full citation.

Sources

• https://globalfishingwatch.org/our-apis/documentation/docs/license-rate-limits: “The Services are available for noncommercial use only in accordance with the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, including complying with the attribution requirements set forth in Section 3 below.”
• https://globalfishingwatch.org/our-apis/documentation/docs/license-rate-limits: “50,000 requests per day”
• https://globalfishingwatch.org/faqs/can-i-use-global-fishing-watch-apis-for-commercial-purposes/: “At this time, we do not have commercial license and pricing terms available to the general public.”