Bockman, a senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward AI who has been tracking shipping around the world for 30 years, says this is not unusual in the Strait of Hormuz. For nearly a decade now, “shadow fleets” engaged in questionable practices by transporting crude oil from Iran in violation of international sanctions have periodically turned off their transponders. These devices typically broadcast ships’ names, locations, routes and IMO (International Maritime Organization) numbers. Those unique, seven-digit IMO identifiers allow trackers like Bockman to locate ships throughout their lifetime.
Jamming and “spoofing” these transponder signals, either by interfering with their satellite signals or by creating false signals to show ships where they are or are not, is nothing new. But there is scale. At one point last month, “more than half the ships in the strait had their signals jammed,” says Bockman. According to Windward AI data, more than 800 ships are in the Persian Gulf today.
Now he and other analysts have found new ways to follow them.
“I keep a very close eye on a large group of 500 or 600 tankers. Some of them I’ve been watching for years,” says Bockman. “I think of them like precocious children. When you find a ship and you figure out which one it is, it’s like, ‘Ah, I see you.'”
There is huge risk in the cat-and-mouse data game. Bockman’s firm, Windward AI, works with marine insurers, oil traders and other financial institutions who are interested in or aboard one of the hundreds of ships that typically (in times of relative peace) pass through the Strait of Hormuz each month. About 20 percent of the petroleum consumed globally passes through the narrow waterway. The disruption there created “complete carnage and chaos,” says Bockman.
The consequences are even more immediate and dire than a long-term global recession. Tankers that are not transmitting their location accurately may collide with others or crash, increasing the potential for catastrophic oil spills.
That’s why trackers are working hard. When Israel and the US attacked Iran in late February, Bockman had to cut short a trip to Australia with his family. Coming back to London, she has been working long hours ever since.
eyes in the sky
Many technologies are used to track disappearing ships, some of which are newer than others. Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, has for years relied on satellite imagery from both commercial and public sources to give paying customers a better understanding of when and where oil and other goods are moving in and out of the strait. But in April, US satellite companies announced they would limit high-resolution imagery of the region.
“We are removing all the old sources and replacing them to perfection,” Madani told WIRED in a message. “We are buying [information] “Also from other Western sources.” He says the company’s data is valuable to other companies, because two-thirds of tanker traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz is by ships with a history of violating sanctions.
Bockman says his company relies on a number of other sources to get a good idea of what’s going on in the strait. Electro-optical imagery uses electronic sensors to detect visible and near-infrared light data. Synthetic-aperture radar uses microwaves to create images even through clouds, rain or darkness. Radio-frequency signals are used to transfer data wirelessly (used in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS). Combine these with databases that include ship registry information and even “human presence signals” from onboard mobile devices, and firms can get a better sense of what is going where. It used to be very expensive to obtain satellite imagery in general, she says, but prices are coming down.
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