‘If you can see it, you can change it’: New data technologies and legibility in global oceans governance

New data technologies are taking center stage in environmental governance because of their potential to reveal the contours of existing and emerging environmental concerns, evaluate management interventions, and identify and facilitate targeted action to improve environmental conditions. In this paper, we explore the first phase research program (2016–2020) of Global Fishing Watch (GFW), a high-profile ocean data science initiative that mobilizes new data technologies with an express goal of supporting data-driven, transparent decision-making for improved oceans governance. In a review of GFW research articles, we find that GFW researchers address concerns related to fishing, biodiversity conservation, and management effectiveness, and mobilize GFW data to illuminate fishing activity, identify illegal activity, infer vessel behavior, and assess management interventions. These analyses lead to a variety of data focused and policy or management focused recommendations for improved oceans governance, some of which explicitly position GFW as active in management. Our results and analysis help to reveal GFW as a governance actor and a mode of governing. While the mode is predicated on transparency and accountability in data-driven decision-making, our results show how governance possibilities are coproduced with the specifics of data and technology. Our findings contribute to a growing corpus of social science research concerned with the ways that new data technologies can ‘render technical’ the politics of environmental governance.