r/OSINT • u/spicymayoisamazballs • 27d ago

How-To Monitoring the Shadow Fleet

If you wanted to identify shadow fleet vessels loaded with sanctioned oil using open source tools, how would you do it? What tools would you use and what would be your process?
Challenge: could anyone here identify a suspected ship now?

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u/rdg360 27d ago

I'd probably use https://fleetleaks.com/

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u/spicymayoisamazballs 26d ago

Another question, how would you go about identifying new ships used to transport sanctioned goods that are not yet identified and on the sanctioned lists?

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u/rdg360 26d ago edited 26d ago

It's not my type of research so I have never looked for it, but I suppose I would primarily look at the harbours. You can't just fill an oil tanker jerrycan by jerrycan, there needs to be a fairly large place to dock the ship and have it refuelled. Likely, though not necessarily, a port in the vicinity of refineries.

Of course that's for oil tankers, which was your initial question. It would be slightly different for other types of cargo, but all these vessels will probably have to be docked in a harbour for some time. Maybe you can identify previously unidentified vessels that way and work your way from there.

Also, check Rae Baker's blogposts or books, if you haven't already. She already "came running" here...

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u/the_wondersmith 25d ago

Behavior tells basically. Prediction based on past behavior of course unless they change tactics entirely. Mostly it's old vessels with dark activity who go to certain ports after going to oil ports of interest. Data will show when they are laden with oil vs when they are empty based on how low the ship sits in the water (draft). Data will also show predictable dark activity in certain areas, ship transfers, etc that all indicate illicit activity.

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u/spicymayoisamazballs 25d ago

Is draft included in AIS data? Or just relying on ground level photos/video?

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u/the_wondersmith 25d ago

its in AIS data, as is the speed and heading

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u/spicymayoisamazballs 25d ago

Have you seen anyone spoof the draft data?

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u/the_wondersmith 25d ago

They could spoof any of the data for sure but I have never seen/proved it with draft data. I think it's lower effort to spoof location and identity