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Using data to defend the ocean

For nearly 20 years, BLOOM has been fighting to protect the ocean, the climate, and small-scale fishing. To better expose the harms of industrial fishing, the organisation developed a powerful tool: Trawl Watch, a real-time mapping application co-developed with Data For Good.

To host this strategic platform, BLOOM chose Clever Cloud — a sovereign, secure, and automated hosting provider offering flexibility with minimal resources.

Trawl Watch: monitoring protected marine areas

We needed reliable, sovereign and scalable hosting for Trawl Watch. Clever Cloud quickly emerged as the ideal solution.

Marthe Vienne

Project Manager at BLOOM

Trawl Watch allows BLOOM to track more than 1,700 industrial fishing vessels across France and Europe, and to identify their presence in marine protected areas.

The tool enables BLOOM to:

• Collect alerts submitted by small-scale fishers;
• Request inspections from relevant authorities;
• Compile investigation files to pressure institutions;
• Inform the public about observed abuses.

Testimonial from Marthe Vienne for BLOOM Association at the Clever Cloud Fest.

A data-intensive application

Trawl Watch aggregates a wide range of data: real-time AIS trajectories, vessel speeds, ship types, time spent in sensitive zones…

All this information is displayed via an interactive map, filterable by area of interest, along with a dashboard showing metrics and rankings (e.g. most intrusive vessels, most impacted zones).

Clever Cloud manages the handling of AIS data volumes — often expensive and complex — while delivering constant performance and seamless scalability, without burdening BLOOM’s technical team.

PaaS hosting built for the mission

Our resources are limited. We’re grateful for Clever Cloud’s support — it gives our technical team flexible and comfortable development time.

Marthe Vienne

Project Manager at BLOOM

Clever Cloud addresses several critical needs for BLOOM:

• Frictionless scaling, crucial for handling a large real-time database;
• French infrastructure, protected from the Cloud Act and ensuring data sovereignty;
• A simple interface, making it easier for non-technical teams to work;
• Responsive support, throughout the project lifecycle;
• Active commitment, by providing cloud resources to power a project with high ecological impact.

Next steps: greater autonomy and impact

Upcoming features include:

• Automatic fishing detection, via open source models or a partner API;
• Smart alerting system, combining speed and time-in-zone to reduce false positives;
• Public launch, with a redesigned interface to boost accessibility and civic engagement.

Trawl Watch is a tool for advocacy — but also a driver for citizen mobilisation. With Clever Cloud, we can go further, faster, without compromising our independence.

Marthe Vienne

Project Manager at BLOOM