Amid an escalating tension in the Persian Gulf over the last months, oil tanker owners seem to have found a new way to tackle the increased danger for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important shipping route for oil supply.
The United States wants all ships to keep their AIS systems on to minimize illicit activity and smuggling, and to increase transparency of ship movements around the globe, a senior State Department official said, in light of several recently-seen practices of vessels turning off their AIS.
Maridive 702, an offshore support vessel, was arrested the previous week in Aruba in a court row over $21 million debt. The 2011-built vessel was held on July 14 but it reportedly left without permission, leading local authorities searching for it.
The Swedish Club announced a new loss prevention pilot project, called ‘Trade Enabling Loss Prevention (TELP)’, which leverages technology in a bid to provide ships with timely advice when they are approaching areas of particular risk, to assist them to trade more safely.
While Automatic Identification System (AIS) is designed to mitigate collisions and enhance situational awareness by exchanging real-time vessel information, this navigational tool can degrade or even disrupt other users’ systems if it is non-compliant with adopted international standards, USCG warned.
Satellite and AIS provider exactEarth Ltd. and ship tracking and maritime intelligence provider MarineTraffic announced they have entered into a three-year channel partner agreement, to boost the offering of real-time information to maritime industry.
With respect to the recent surge in sanctions globally, Mrs. Irene Anastassiou, Senior Lawyer at the Gard P&I Club, noted that the practice of turning off the AIS to avoid detection is a breach of SOLAS and Flag State requirements, while it increases the risk of maritime casualties and loss of life.
With the rapid evolution observed within the technology sector, from machine learning to analysis of big data, the information one can extract from Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) are doing nothing but increasing with the passage time.
The Chilean government announced that it will make its vessel tracking data available to public through the Global Fishing Watch map (GFW), which tracks the movements of commercial fishing vessels in near real-time. The agreement was made between Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (or SERNAPESCA) and GFW.
During the 2019 SAFETY4SEA London Conference, Mr. Dustin Eno, COO, Navigate Response, noted that the shipping industry is more visible now than at any time in history; from AIS vessel tracking, to seafarer social media activity, people can see the industry like never before. Information is now more available to outside watchers than before.
