[coredog64]

A database works if you have a central authority that manages it and accepts inputs. I’m going to switch to a different animal for a better perspective.

In the Pacific, tuna is caught within the EEZ of a number of (mostly) poor island nations. Some boats are part of the national fleet, but most are foreign flagged. The privilege to fish in an EEZ is costly, so there are a number of measures used to ensure that there is no cheating. The boat owners keep records, there are third party observers on board, and vessels broadcast positions. You need to cross check all these records, and do it in an environment without broadband.

To make things more complicated, there are incentives between countries. Fishing days are a finite resource governed by treaties. Poor countries have an incentive to oversell, and it’s possible to look the other way within an EEZ sometimes. Not only that, but countries have legitimate reasons for not broadcasting anything but gross yields from their EEZ.

All of this means that there’s not one central authority that can provide a single database.