Josh Plumley

VOA said on 26 Oct that CHON MA SAN, a North Korean tanker under UN sanctions, was near Tang Yu off China on 24 Oct. She was easy to find. We heard her under her own name, still 13 nm off Pingtan to 6 PM EDT 26 Oct, then moving 57 nm north of there at 7 AM today. hullcipher.com/vessel/8660313

OFAC sanctioned Pingtan Marine's fishing boats by name in 2022. Six now broadcast a different hull number. Five switched within six hours of each other on 24-25 Aug, one of them tied up in Montevideo. The story, with the map: hullcipher.com/findings/2026-10-05-pingtan-new-numbers

FU YUAN YU 7602 became 7752 on her Montevideo berth, a minute after her last broadcast under the old name. Four sisters came out of the Min River near Fuzhou already renumbered. Is renumbering routine for Chinese distant-water fleets, or new for Pingtan?

OFAC's 21 Oct Iran round lists the crew boat WHALES DIAMOND (IMO 9375032) with MMSI 470132000. That number is a tug's. We hear it on SPEARFISH ANN 2, built in 1993, off Ajman in the UAE. VesselFinder agrees. Screen by OFAC's number and you hit the tug.

The US may lift sanctions on shadow fleet tankers one by one, saying EU and UK ones would still apply. In the Gulf they mostly don't. Of 99 US-listed tankers we heard there this week, 91 are on no other list we follow. safety4sea.com/us-outlines-plan-to-return-dark-fleet-tankers-to-legitimate-trade

Fun with GPS spirographs! A week off Vysotsk, Russia. The tug RATNIK reports about 3 knots, but her position keeps jumping around a loop 2-4 nm wide. 10,951 of her 12,044 reports moved faster than any ship can. Two sanctioned ships passing by, PRIMORYE and ALEKSANDR SOKOLOV, got dragged in too.

A tanker usually goes quiet for a day or more between one country's number and the next. MYRA (IMO 9336490), on five sanctions lists, took seven minutes. At 5:26 AM EDT on 15 Oct she was heading west off Prangli, Estonia, on a Madagascar number. At 5:33 we heard her on a Cameroon one.

Same name, same 228 m hull, 2.6 km further on. Of 150 changes like this we've heard on listed ships since late June, she's one of two made inside an hour with the ship under way. OFAC's entry has a Panama number for her. VesselFinder still shows Madagascar. hullcipher.com/vessel/9336490

The US and UK took the tanker ASTRA (IMO 9273387) off their sanctions lists this year. Canada didn't. She's broadcasting as LUMIS now, so searching Canada's list for that name turns up nothing. Left port 8 Oct, AIS says Kunak, Malaysia. hullcipher.com/vessel/9273387

Three sanctioned tankers at Istanbul went quiet on AIS within twelve hours on 17 Sep. Great Jacombo (IMO 9319703) at 10:18 UTC and Fu Hai Wan (9368235) at 21:57 UTC, alongside each other at the same Tuzla berth. Lara (9221475) at 13:25 UTC at the anchorage off Yenikapı. None heard since.

And a correction. The 15 and 14 were ships heard across that stretch of water, not at the berth. From 8 AM EDT on 28 Sep we heard at most four others an hour there, and none in half those hours. At 2 AM EDT on 29 Sep that jumped to 15. Both were back by 3:13 AM. So that was our coverage.

Japan's first sanctions on ships, 35 of them, took effect on 2 Oct. Not one of them was new. All 35 were already on the US, EU, Canadian and Swiss lists, every one since December 2024 or earlier.

Japan's list gives each ship an IMO number and no name. Take IMO 9271585. Four lists call her KRISHNA 1 and the UK calls her PRUDENCE. On air she's KOMANDER, on a Russian number, and VesselFinder files her that way too. We last heard her off Karpathos on 4 Oct. hullcipher.com/vessel/9271585

One IMO number is meant to be one ship. Late on 3 Oct, IMO 9291250 was two. At 11:32 PM EDT the tanker STILGAR was off Tangier, her AIS set for Port Said. Seven seconds earlier, a transponder in the Taiwan Strait sent the same IMO.

That one called itself CORTEX. It's her old name, and the one the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand list her under. It sent her exact size, 250 by 44 m, on a Cameroon number. We heard it for 46 minutes. Then nothing. hullcipher.com/vessel/9291250

The UK added eight ships to its Russia list on 1 Oct. Three are ice-class LNG carriers the US blocked back in June 2024: ALEKSEY KOSYGIN, PYOTR STOLYPIN and KONSTANTIN POSIET. Four more are on no other list we follow, and one, BEBEK-E, was already on the EU's.

OFAC still lists POSIET as ZVEZDA 045. The last time we heard her, on 12 Aug in the Sea of Okhotsk off Hokkaido, she was broadcasting the UK's name. hullcipher.com/vessel/9904704 Has anyone seen the other four on AIS lately, and under what names?

The UK added eight ships to its Russia list on 1 Oct. Three are ice-class LNG carriers the US blocked back in June 2024: ALEKSEY KOSYGIN, PYOTR STOLYPIN and KONSTANTIN POSIET. Four more are on no other list we follow, and one, BEBEK-E, was already on the EU's.

Three sanctioned tankers at Istanbul went quiet on AIS within twelve hours on 17 Sep. Great Jacombo (IMO 9319703) at 10:18 UTC and Fu Hai Wan (9368235) at 21:57 UTC, alongside each other at the same Tuzla berth. Lara (9221475) at 13:25 UTC at the anchorage off Yenikapı. None heard since.

When one ship goes quiet we can't tell if it stopped or our coverage did. So we count who else nearby kept transmitting: 15, 14 and 36 other ships through those three. In a repair yard that's often just the transponder switched off. What's alongside at Tuzla this week? hullcipher.com/vessel/9319703

A tanker six lists can't agree on has picked a fourth name. IMO 9310525 is OILSTAR to the EU, Australia and Switzerland. IONIA to the UK and Canada. QENDIL to New Zealand. Since 13 Sep she's been on air as GIATSINT, on a Russian MMSI, still at the Tuzla yards. hullcipher.com/vessel/9310525

Her third MMSI in two months, and the third listed tanker at Tuzla to take a Russian number in a month. ACHILLES (9368223) came back as VEZUVIAN on 27 Aug. SEALION I (9234501) kept STABILIS I on a new number on 6 Sep. Three call signs from one block: UAYG5, UAYG8, UAYG9. No list publishes any.

Might be old news, but here's the part after the headlines. DELIVER (IMO 9194983) left Primorsk laden on Jun 5. The French Navy boarded her off Sicily on Jun 25 and held her in the Gulf of Fos; on Jul 22 she paid a fine and was let go. Then the coverage stops.

An LPG tanker OFAC lists as BATELEUR (IMO 9045807) has spent the week off Sharjah renaming herself one keystroke at a time: CRAVE on Sep 13, BRAVE by the 14th, BRAVO since the 17th. Same transponder, same call sign, same destination. Was someone fat-fingering the name until it stuck?

Three sanctioned tankers, real tracks 100 km apart, one point they all keep snapping to: Fokino, Ussuri Bay, 12 Sep. Mirabel (IMO 9511521), He Bo (9408554, on air as Xing Yuan), Vostochny Prospect (9866392). A minute or two on the spot, then back on track. Interference, not a ship lying.

The tanker in gCaptain's Arctic STS story last week, MIRABEL (IMO 9511521), switched her AIS back on Friday south of Nakhodka. For about six hours her reported position kept snapping to one spot in Ussuri Bay, 60 km from where she actually was, while she steamed east at 10 knots.

Has anyone else noticed the gemstones? Over the last month about thirty sanctioned tankers came up on new Russian MMSIs, and half of them were renamed after minerals. Izumrud, Sapfir, Tanzanit, Morganit, Khrizolit, Giatsint, Turmalin, Nefrit. July's batch was rivers. #ShadowFleet #OSINT