Overcoming positioning data gaps to safeguard against dark seas shipping
The shipping sector and its interconnected supply chains are facing unparalleled challenges as a result of recent crises and geopolitical tensions. A rapidly expanding shadow fleet, involved in illicit ship-to-ship (STS) transfers of Russian oil and liquified natural gas (LNG), has exacerbated the long-standing issue of ‘dark shipping’. This problem, characterized by illegal activities such as human trafficking, arms smuggling, drug trading, and unregulated fishing, poses serious threats to national security, vessel safety, and the environment, while also jeopardizing global supply chains.
In response to this crisis, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted Assembly Resolution A.1192(33) in December 2023, urging governments and all
related stakeholders to take decisive action against the shadow fleet. However, continued reliance on automatic identification systems (AIS) for vessel tracking limits these efforts. AIS is too easily disabled, jammed, or spoofed, rendering it inadequate for addressing dark shipping and ensuring maritime security. To safeguard these vessels and supply chains effectively, the shipping industry needs to adopt an advanced, multi-layered tracking approach that integrates diverse data sources and real-time analytics to deliver reliable and accurate vessel positioning information.
Captain Steve Bomgardner, VP Shipping & Offshore, Pole Star Global, explains how a persistent tracking solution that overcomes the huge gaps in current positioning data is a vital next step in the safeguarding of vessels at sea.
Growing global risks and sanctions
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the cornerstone of global maritime order, is under increasing strain due to escalating geopolitical instability. Tensions in regions such as the Black Sea, Crimea, South China Sea, Spratly Islands, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Yemen, along with the Straits of Hormuz, Iran are seriously undermining maritime safety. Rising attacks on shipping in high-risk areas such as the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have also prompted ship masters themselves to switch off AIS tracking to avoid being targeted. While this can help to reduce vulnerability in the short term, it also increases the risk of collisions and environmental disasters and creates supply chain uncertainty.
The lack of transparency in global shipping is now a critical concern for governments and stakeholders striving to maintain compliance. In response to the heightened sanctions from the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, Russian oil tankers have shifted away from the large open registries to smaller, less stringent flags, further complicating the efforts of the IMO and national regulators to restore order.
Shortly after the IMO Assembly Resolution, US authorities issued a Quint Seal Notice from their key regulators in December 2023, urging vessel owners, charterers, exporters, brokers, shipping companies, freight forwarders, commodities traders, and financial institutions to assess risks and implement appropriate compliance-focused programs.
Persistent tracking: a new standard
Improving transparency in shipping is imperative, but achieving it is far from straightforward. It is generally outside the capability of a single organization for reasons of specialization, involving data selection, aggregation, management and storage, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) processing, and overall technical complexity and cost. Therefore, it is best to align with an established specialist application service provider.
Current regulatory demands for stakeholders to strengthen and utilize enhanced fleet tracking highlight the inadequacy of AIS as a standalone tracking system. The ease with which illicit shipping can affect AIS tracking, through switching-off, spoofing and jamming, confirms that this ubiquitous system is not reliable enough to provide the tracking rigor required for today’s maritime security, safety, environmental, and sanctions compliance needs. Continued reliance on AIS alone will compromise any compliance enforcement attempts. The industry now urgently requires a non-compromisable solution that leverages multiple tracking data sources supplemented at times with affordable Earth-observation (EO) data sources to deliver persistent tracking of every vessel. This is necessary not only in high-risk areas (HRAs) but also in known jamming areas, ports, and high-ship density areas subject to signal contention where tracking information can sometimes be hard to attain or is disrupted.
Persistent tracking overlays multiple-vessel tracking services and data sources, including AIS and secure point-to-point satellite tracking systems (Inmarat-C, Iridium, etc.), voyage plans when available, EO-data when relevant, and uses real-time analytics to transform the accuracy and reliability of vessel location data.
Confidence and compliance
With multiple layered data sources and robust cross referencing and analysis, the persistent tracking model allows stakeholders to have increased confidence in the true vessel position. Guessing is eliminated and errors associated with false positives are minimized, allowing stakeholders to ensure any anomaly or vessel deviation is immediately identified and notified, and open to investigation.
Multiple, diverse vessel detection technologies feed into live dashboards, providing stakeholders with the essential visibility and control required to confidently locate and manage vessels. By adding the power of predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, stakeholders can gain far more insight into the extent of dark activity and ensure secure, safe, clean, and compliant operations.
Conclusion
While AIS transformed vessel tracking in past decades, its simplicity has become a liability in today’s congested and high-risk seas. The system’s susceptibility to disabling, jamming, or spoofing creates gaps in vessel tracking data that allow bad actors to operate unchecked, while also compromising the safety of legitimate vessels. Signal congestion and interference further exacerbate these vulnerabilities, creating unacceptable risk across global shipping networks.
Without the adoption of a persistent tracking solution that layers multiple data streams to close these information gaps, the maritime sector will remain vulnerable to security threats, environmental disasters, supply chain disruptions, and escalating insurance costs. Enhanced compliance measures and risk assessments are a necessary starting point, but only a robust tracking framework can provide the transparency and reliability required to ensure maritime safety and security.
For a list of the sources used in this article, please contact the editor.
Captain Steve Bomgardner is VP Shipping & Offshore at Pole Star Global. Pole Star is embedded into the fabric of global maritime trade – from vessel registration and safety to routing, performance and sanctions, along with cargo tracking, port arrivals and illicit behavior identification. Its patented technology and data enable responsibility in financing, voyage optimization, emissions control, life at sea, surveillance, identifying illicit behavior, and reputational risk, resulting in better protection for vessels, people, and investments.