maritime

The article by Henk van Ess covers the efforts of seven journalist students in uncovering some of the drone flights over airports and military bases. Their investigation centred around three freighters: HAV Dolphin, Lauga, and HAV Snapper, with their proximity to these drone flights and their ties to Russia. The main method of locating these freighters and their movements was through AIS data obtained from the Global Fishing Watch. The narrative being pushed by the author was that the authorities were not investigating or taking action, but also contradicted himself a few times in the article. It makes it hard to read, but it should not undermine the work done by the seven students. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to notice this as it was also talked about in replies on Mastodon where I first discovered this article.

Here's also some related reading about drones near the Dublin Airport around the expected time of Ukrainian President Zelensky's arrival.

A collection of "sketchy boats" sorted by sketchiness. The reasons for sketchiness and the rules by which it's judged can be found on GitHub.

I wanted to track down a 53ft shipping container used to transport goods to the USA, that's when I came across "Matt's Place". A website with a huge collection of intermodal containers, sorted by type; documenting images, markings, and current owners.

The FAQ describes the site's purpose is to act as a photo gallery for "transportation historians, scale modelers, and people in the transportation industry". Always fun finding little corners of the web like this.

When Sal Mercogliano was covering the recent uncrewed surface vessel strike of the MV Tutor in the Red Sea he referenced an ArcGIS StoryMap created by Noam Raydan and Farzin Nadimi of the Washington Institute. The StoryMap is very comprehensive and documents the attacks in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab, and neighbouring areas dating back to 2019.

The article tells the story of the underground cables that power the internet, as they follow the 50 crew members of KDDI Ocean Link, one of 22 repair and maintenance ships of the 77 cable ships in the world in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

On average, [cable breaks] happen every other day, about 200 times a year. The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks.

An informative @Reuters graphics article on the Houthi rebel attacks at the Bab al-Mandab straight with detailed plots on the attack types, context on the political situation, and how it affects the crew, shipping companies and global shipping.