Satlink

Satlink

Satlink was established in 1992 by President Faustino Velasco, who initially applied satellite communications to improve connectivity for distant-water fishing fleets. Over three decades the firm shifted its focus from pure communications hardware toward a vertically integrated maritime-technology platform, combining real-time vessel monitoring, catch documentation, and oceanographic analytics for commercial fleets, governments, and regional fisheries-management organizations. The company operates across three principal asset classes: proprietary satellite-linked hardware installed on vessels, a cloud-based data-management platform for electronic catch reporting and traceability, and advisory services that support scientific observers and regulatory compliance. Its hardware-and-software ecosystem targets the pelagic tuna sector in particular, with confirmed installations on purse-seine and longline vessels. Satlink's device — a ruggedized satellite transceiver combined with an onboard electronic logbook — transmits position, catch composition, and transshipment data to port authorities and Regional Fisheries Management Organizations such as the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. The firm designs, manufactures, and services its own hardware from its Madrid headquarters, deploying technicians across multiple continents to install and maintain equipment in often remote ports from the Seychelles to Ecuador. Satlink does not publicly disclose revenue or total fleet coverage, but in 2023 it partnered with the Spanish government and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization on a project to install electronic-monitoring systems across Ecuador's tuna fleet — a deployment that moved it deeper into the Pacific's regulatory infrastructure. The company has also supplied technology to the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean and has contributed vessel-data streams to Global Fishing Watch, the transparency platform backed by Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google. Its team operates primarily out of Madrid, with field-service personnel stationed in port locations that support purse-seine fleets in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Unlike generic maritime-IT consultancies, Satlink occupies a narrow niche in which it acts as both an approved technology vendor for tuna regional fisheries-management bodies and a direct supplier to the industrial fishing companies that those bodies regulate. Satlink's structural differentiator is not its hardware but the regulatory entanglement of its platform. Because its devices are certified for compliance with multiple tuna treaties, the firm functions as a de facto infrastructure layer between commercial operators and multilateral fishery authorities — a position closer to a utility than to a conventional maritime-tech vendor. This architecture creates both a durable revenue stream and an unusual governance footprint, since Satlink's data standards and reporting protocols effectively define how catch data reaches treaty bodies.