Black Sea Shadow Fleet Weekly
Every week, OIN screens live AIS traffic across the Black Sea and other chokepoints for
the three signatures of shadow-fleet behaviour — AIS gaps (transponder goes dark), loitering
(near-zero speed for >20 min), and ship-to-ship proximity (a possible at-sea transfer) — and
delivers a named-hull triage list with MMSI, flag, last fix and gap duration. Built on
real live AIS (aisstream.io), not a model and not a guess.
Windward, Kpler and Lloyd's List Intelligence gate maritime-risk products behind an enterprise seat (publicly reported seats run $50k–$250k/yr). We screen the same public AIS those tools ingest and hand you the raw, hash-sealed dark-activity detection — AIS gaps, loitering, ship-to-ship — for a fraction of an enterprise seat, starting at $99. For the sharp who builds their own models and needs raw, early, KYC-free data with proof of when it existed — not for copy-traders. Anonymity is a feature, not a bug: pay in USDC, no KYC, no account in your name.
| Screened at (UTC) | 2026-06-11 01:15Z |
|---|---|
| Vessels in scope | 1,298 distinct hulls tracked across watch zones |
| Dark-activity alerts | 50 total · 39 in the Black Sea · 10 South China Sea · 1 Taiwan Strait |
| Source | live AIS WebSocket (aisstream.io), OIN dark-shipping detector |
| Across the OIN feed | live count provenance-sealed signals available now · live count at /api/v1/signals |
This is a dated sample issue (snapshot above, 2026-06-11).
The underlying AIS detector updates continuously, but this page is a fixed sample, not a live render. Subscribers receive a
fresh self-updating screen weekly plus the inter-week deltas.
▲ NEW THIS WEEK / DELTA — Week 2026-W24
Honesty note: fabricating change signals against a missing baseline is worse than saying “day one.” The snapshot records 50 hulls across Black Sea / South China Sea / Taiwan Strait as of 2026-06-11 01:38Z. Next Monday’s run will diff against this.
What the delta tracks (live from week 2):
- NEW HULLS Vessels that first tripped a dark-activity flag this week (not in prior week’s screen)
- NEWLY DARK Hulls whose AIS transponder went silent this week — gap opened since last snapshot
- NEW STS PAIR Ship-to-ship proximity clusters that are new vs the prior week
- CLEARED Hulls that dropped off the list (gap closed, loitering ended, or left watch zone)
Snapshot written: 2026-06-11 01:38Z ·
Hulls in baseline: 50 · Delta engine: scripts/dark_shipping_delta.py ·
Snapshots: data/dark_shipping_snapshots/2026-W24.json
Sample issue — top 10 Black Sea hulls by AIS-gap duration
These are real vessels pulled directly from this week's live screen. Ranked by how long each hull went dark (longest transponder gap first). Every hull below traces to a real MMSI you can look up on any public AIS site.
| # | Vessel | MMSI | Flag (from MMSI) | Score | Max AIS gap | Fixes | Last fix (UTC) | STS-pair MMSI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NEGMAR CICEK | 538009529 |
Marshall Islands | 90 | 7.9 d | 29 | 2026-06-10 22:14Z | 667001522 |
| 2 | MERA QUEEN | 630001066 |
Georgia | 90 | 6.7 d | 8 | 2026-06-07 19:52Z | 636014608 |
| 3 | MSC HOGGAR | 271000742 |
Turkey | 90 | 3.9 d | 10 | 2026-05-31 19:24Z | 304903000 |
| 4 | R/V "YUNUS-S" | 271043664 |
Turkey | 90 | 3.8 d | 14 | 2026-06-10 03:34Z | 620800187 |
| 5 | HARRISON | 538001652 |
Marshall Islands | 90 | 3.3 d | 11 | 2026-06-07 23:37Z | 622120321 |
| 6 | YBERIA | 213987000 |
Georgia | 90 | 3.0 d | 21 | 2026-06-10 10:35Z | 352001535 |
| 7 | CARMELIA | 209048000 |
Cyprus | 90 | 2.9 d | 10 | 2026-06-06 22:41Z | 305176000 |
| 8 | CAGLA | 314103000 |
Bangladesh | 90 | 2.6 d | 7 | 2026-05-23 02:25Z | 304903000 |
| 9 | ALTURA | 667001275 |
Sierra Leone | 90 | 2.0 d | 30 | 2026-06-10 06:29Z | 271043070 |
| 10 | MONTE ROSA | 538002947 |
Marshall Islands | 90 | 1.8 d | 10 | 2026-06-10 10:10Z | 213982000 |
Flag is derived from the vessel's MMSI Maritime Identification Digits (ITU MID, first three digits) — a deterministic registry lookup, not an assertion of beneficial ownership. STS-pair MMSI is the counterpart hull our detector found within close proximity during the window. "Unknown" flag = MID not in our lookup table, not an anomaly.
- This is a screening signal, analyst-adjudicated. It tells you where to look, not what is true. Every hull on this list still needs a human to adjudicate.
- The suspicion score is a blunt triage heuristic. It saturates at 90 — a 90 means "trips multiple flags, look here," not "90% sanctioned." It does NOT rank or rate hulls against each other once they top out, and it is NOT a sanctions, OFAC, or legal determination of any kind.
- AIS can be spoofed or simply delayed. A long "gap" can be a genuine dark period, a spoofed/duplicated MMSI, an out-of-range coastal sensor, or a backhaul lag. We report the gap; we do not assert intent.
- Some loiter flags are legitimate. Anchorage queues, weather holds, bunkering, and port congestion all look like loitering. The Black Sea has heavy legitimate anchorage traffic.
- No sanctions matches this week. Our origin/destination sanctions heuristic returned 0 matches in this screen — we report that honestly rather than inflate the list.
In short: this is a place to start an investigation, with receipts, at a price you can afford — not a finished accusation.
What you get each week
| Deliverable | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full dark-activity list | All hulls tripping AIS-gap / loiter / STS flags this week, with MMSI, flag, last fix, gap duration, coordinates, and fix count |
| Inter-week deltas | New hulls vs last week, hulls that went dark again, STS-pairs that recurred |
| Raw export | The underlying dark_shipping_alerts.json on request — join it to your own OFAC / registry / ownership data |
| Zone coverage | Black Sea by default; Strait of Hormuz, South China Sea, Taiwan Strait available on the enterprise tier |
Pricing — lead the floor, keep the ceiling
OSINT / Journalist
For investigative reporters, OSINT analysts, NGOs and independent researchers. Weekly Black Sea issue, named hulls, raw export on request. Pay in USDC — no KYC, no account in your name. Anonymity is the feature.
Enterprise
For desks, funds and compliance teams who need multi-zone coverage (Hormuz, South China Sea, Taiwan Strait), daily cadence, and the raw feed wired into your pipeline. Still a fraction of a Windward / Kpler / Lloyd's seat.
Start on the OSINT / Journalist tier (weekly Black Sea issue, named hulls, raw export on request). Pay in USDC — no KYC, no account in your name.
Start on Telegram → @OinSignalbot Request a free sample issueThe free sample is the complete 50-hull screen with deltas, so you can adjudicate the data quality before you pay a cent. USDC payment · anonymous · verify our receipts · see the sealed-record proof · public scorecard
Why trust the data?
OIN's whole thesis is provenance over prediction. We don't claim to know which of these hulls is running sanctioned
cargo — we claim, and let you verify, that we observed the AIS behaviour when we said we did. We sell verifiable receipts
and lead-time, not predictions. The shadow-fleet feed is built on the same honesty discipline as the rest of OIN: real source
(aisstream.io live WebSocket), real hulls, explicit caveats, and no fabricated vessels. If a flag is a false positive,
we'd rather you catch it on a free sample than discover it after a $50k seat.
Across resolved, graded calls, OIN's directional accuracy is published live on the public scorecard. That shows no demonstrated directional edge — concentrated in one source (selection bias, not replicable), and we don't sell forecasts. What we sell is the raw, hash-sealed observation: proof of when the signal existed, early, for you to build your own model on.
Analytics & research only — not financial, legal, or sanctions advice. The suspicion score is a triage heuristic, not an OFAC or legal determination. AIS data can be spoofed or delayed; some loiter flags are legitimate anchorage queuing. No vessel listed here is asserted to be engaged in any unlawful activity; this is a screening signal for human adjudication. Vessel data sourced from live public AIS broadcasts.