In legal filings, the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency says its former contractor owes it more than a million dollars for breach of contract. Spotlight PA reports.
According to the post, Joseph Quattrochi of Bushkill, Pa, father of the alleged shooter Andrew Quattrochi, was arrested Saturday by Stroud County police officers.
In legal filings, the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency says its former contractor owes it more than a million dollars for breach of contract. Spotlight PA reports.
According to the post, Joseph Quattrochi of Bushkill, Pa, father of the alleged shooter Andrew Quattrochi, was arrested Saturday by Stroud County police officers.
Canada has made its first-ever naval deployment to Antarctica. Last week, the Royal Canadian Navy vessel HMCS Margaret Brooke departed Halifax bound for the South American and Antarctic regions. The deployment of the vessel marks the start of Operation Projection 2025, as Canada eyes to enhance its cooperation with partners in South America. In addition, the expedition is meant to support Canada’s Antarctic scientific research.
“It is a historic moment as our Navy takes a step further south, into the Antarctic region. The crew on board HMCS Margaret Brooke embarks on a long and strenuous journey that will bring forward Canada’s presence and diplomacy to nations throughout the Central and South Americas,” said Rear-Admiral Josée Kurtz, Commander of the Canadian Maritime Forces Atlantic.
HMCS Margaret Brooke is a Harry DeWolf – class Arctic and Offshore Patrol Vessel (AOPV). The vessel entered naval service in October of 2022 as the second AOPV delivered under the Canadian National Shipbuilding Strategy. The vessel is meant to enhance Canada’s presence in the Arctic waters. However, during this expedition, the vessel will for the first time show its operational capabilities in the Antarctic maritime domain.
The expedition is scheduled to last for four months, with the ship expected back in Halifax in May. 85 crew members are onboard, and scientists from the National Research Council will join the ship in Punta Arenas, Chile for a two-week tour south of the Antarctic circle.
“The scientists will be doing some core sampling (of the ocean floor), some oceanography and some marine geology. HMCS Margaret Brooke was deployed north of the Arctic circle this past summer. With this deployment south of the Antarctic circle, it will be the first Canadian warship to reach the northernmost and southernmost points of the Earth within the same year,” said Commodore Jacob French, Commander of the Canadian Atlantic Fleet.
For the first time, China's coast guard has begun patrolling a section of the country's "nine-dash line" - the loosely-defined boundary of Beijing's unilateral claim to the South China Sea, including international waters and other states' exclusive economic zones.
Since the beginning of the new year, a group of large China Coast Guard cutters have been rotating through patrol duty in an area just off Zambales, Luzon. At closest approach, the patrols have come within about 55 nautical miles of Philippine shores.
One of the deployed vessels is CCG 5901, the largest armed law enforcement vessel in the world at 12,000 tonnes displacement. Over VHF, its crew has informed the Philippine Coast Guard that the CCG is enforcing Chinese law in Chinese waters, even when 100 nautical miles inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone.
The Philippine Coast Guard has dispatched the offshore patrol vessel BRP Teresa Magbanua to monitor the Chinese presence and push back on these sovereignty claims. Despite rough weather conditions, the crew of the Magbanua have kept watch and demonstrated continued Philippine presence.
While monitoring the Chinese flotilla, the Philippine Coast Guard noticed a pattern that may explain the China Coast Guard's new behavior. The CCG cutters have been patrolling a north-south racetrack off Luzon's coast, and the tracklines align well with a segment of the "nine-dash line," which was invalidated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague in 2016.
Courtesy PCG
"Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo. This strategy of normalization, followed by altering the status quo and ultimately operationalizing their illegal narrative, has consistently been part of the Chinese playbook," said PCG spokesman Jay Tarriela. "This is why it is important for the Philippine Coast Guard to actively expose these unlawful deployments of Chinese vessels to the global community, ensuring that such actions are not normalized and that this bullying behavior does not succeed."
Tarriela warned that if China does not get pushed back, it could begin conducting the same patrols in other nations' exclusive economic zones, since the "nine-dash line" affects all of the coastal states of the South China Sea. This includes waters administered by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.
To the north, South Korea's government is eyeing new Chinese activity in a contested part of the Yellow Sea. The so-called Provisional Measures Zone is claimed by both sides, and all activities within it are banned except for navigating and fishing. Construction is specifically disallowed - but China has been installing large metal structures in the zone, which it describes as "fishing support facilities." Another structure recently went in the water, South Korean officials reported January 9.
East Asian defense analysts have noted that China pursued a similar incremental strategy with its island-building campaign in the South China Sea - creating nominally civilian structures, militarizing them over time, and then using them to support political claims of sovereignty.
“China is not only installing structures but also conducting military exercises in the region, signaling its ambitions to establish effective control over the West Sea,” Lee Dong-gyu, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told Chosun Daily. “These actions aim to gain leverage in future negotiations with South Korea.”
The grounded self-unloader Algoma Verity has been refloated and safely moved to a nearby berth, the U.S. Coast Guard reported Sunday.
At about 1130 hours Sunday morning, Algoma Verity was refloated on a rising tide, and she is now moored at Tioga Marine Terminal in Philadelphia. Coast Guard officers, salvors and representatives from the owner remain aboard to monitor the situation and continue an investigation into the cause of the casualty.
“The on-scene personnel demonstrated exceptional initiative in a very dynamic environment,” said Capt. Kate Higgins-Bloom, captain of the port and commander of Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay. “The vessel is now well out of the channel, but we still have work to do to get the Algoma Verity safely out of the port. We are thankful for the flexibility of all our port partners as we work to protect public safety, the marine environment, and commerce.”
As a precautionary measure, the Coast Guard has set up a revised safety zone extending 100 yards upriver and downriver from the Tioga Marine Terminal.
On Wednesday night, Algoma Verity was northbound from the Port of Philadelphia with a cargo of 45,000 tonnes of salt, bound upriver for a terminal in Bucks County. In windy conditions, she went aground outside the main shipping channel in a bend just north of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. The pilot of the 50,000 dwt self-unloader notified the Coast Guard of the incident at 1830 hours Wednesday, prompting an emergency response.
The vessel sustained tank damage in four ballast tanks and one empty fuel tank, according to the Coast Guard. No pollution or injuries have been reported, and an investigation into the cause of the casualty is under way.
Imagine a world where every ship is piloted by an excellent captain, every hospital patient is attended to by an excellent doctor and every magazine article is written by an excellent author – and I don’t mean me, but rather an artificial intelligence (AI).
Our world now features AIs that, like their human creators, have highly differentiated areas of specialty. While ChatGPT and Claude make headlines for writing, less visible but equally revolutionary AI systems are transforming industries like shipping.
At the core of the AIs mentioned is the ability to analyze billions of data points like words, waveforms or pixels to train “parameters,” which are how AI grasps relationships. AI then weights these parameters, thus generating an “odds table” based on statistical understanding, to model relationships between inputs and outputs. By pattern matching with its parameters, AI can use those relationships to accurately guess outcomes.
It’s this probabilistic element that distinguishes AI from mere software, whose results tend to be deterministic: That means it will produce the same output when given the same input. AI operates more like a human mind, which can think in non-linear ways, remember things incorrectly or misspeak – although this arises from probabilistic data modeling, not the physical, sensory experience that humans enjoy.
Like a baseball player instinctively hitting a 100 mile-per-hour fastball, AI relies on experiential knowledge – the parameters – to make split-second decisions based on probabilities rather than performing real-time calculations for every variable.
Competing with Humans?
It’s for this reason that AI will compete for roles that have relied on humans with years of experience, who have developed a “velvet touch” or intuition, down to the specific quirks of docking at a certain berth, or who know the ins and outs of a given waterway.
That one ship that seems to only sail right when her favorite captain runs her? Ironically, it’s specifically for that type of situation that AI will be most effectively deployed.
But why? Isn’t it counter-intuitive that AI is so good at something so artisanal?
The key is that an AI is trained similarly to a human. It’s provided with inputs and outputs, and it gauges the results. So, by capturing enough data and keeping enough memory, AI could define limitless parameters for a ship, handling it in virtually any circumstance, much like the blind prophet Tiresias of Homer’s Odyssey: “If you can snare him and hold him tight, he will tell you about your voyage, what courses you are to take, and how you are to sail the sea so as to reach your home.”
The AI would not even need to “set foot” on board. Indeed, the only requirement would be that the dataset be as comprehensive and as accurate as possible. It would not even need to be perfectly accurate – remember, “parameters” are like odds tables.
People typically think of computers as rigid but powerful, inflexible but precise. AI is not like that: It can display finesse as a human would, but it doesn’t panic or get drunk or tired. It can guess accurately based on intuition when faced with imprecise knowledge.
These skills require intelligence, which used to be reserved for humans.
Maritime AI
And that intelligence comes in all shapes and sizes.
For example, the small but powerful shipboard units provided by Hefring Marine, the Icelandic maritime technology company founded in 2018, are nothing like the vast arrays of tensor graphics cards and virtual memory banks that power ChatGPT or Claude. This is partly because Hefring Marine’s AI is so much more specialized. It only needs to optimize one vessel for its operations and environment, using training data fed to it from roughly 30 sensors.
The often-limited connectivity at sea is not an obstacle to collecting essential training data since the unit can operate independently for months without Internet access. It simply stores data locally and uploads it when connectivity is restored.
In terms of “accuracy,” Hefring Marine trained its initial models with Norwegian Search and Rescue, who have experienced captains who know their ships very well. They provided a baseline, or idealized outcome, against which to test the AI’s performance. The AI’s result, its deviation from the idealized outcome, is termed the “error.” A low-error model will consistently produce outcomes which are close to the idealized outcome.
During training, the AI will constantly compare its outputs to those of seasoned captains, refining its parameters. Once the AI’s error rate hits its target range, its training is complete, and it will reliably emulate the seasoned captain’s decision-making, which ideally means it will optimize fuel efficiency, speed and safety, and navigational choices.
Hefring’s AI model claims to boost fuel efficiency by three to 20 percent while minimizing hard impacts that wear down both vessels and crews. If data gathered from the decision-making of a great captain was used to train the AI model, then it’s like always having a great captain looking over your shoulder and providing feedback on a digital overlay.
Ever the bellwether of practical merit, marine insurers are signaling interest. Some even offer premium discounts as an incentive to use Hefring Marine’s AI. The insights it provides help insurers assess damages more quickly and accurately. The collected data minimizes factual arguments. Further, the system’s predictive capabilities alert operators to potential maintenance needs, saving costs over the vessel’s lifespan.
It’s only a matter of time before AI on ships is not just for navigational assistance and safety advice. Eventually, given enough data and computing power, it should be able to handle complex tasks like dynamically positioning a monopile in a wind park. For now, however, most operators, especially those doing niche tasks, are safe.
Legal Implications
But AI adoption is likely to grow. As it does, the law will come into play, particularly in Europe. The E.U.’s AI Act, touted as the world’s first “comprehensive” regulatory regime targeting AI, betrays its discomfort with technology. For example, in 2023 the E.U. prognosticated that ChatGPT’s GPT-4 model, which is in common use, would likely “pose systemic risk” given its vast range of capabilities.
AIs operating in other areas may also be deemed “high risk,” e.g., in medicine, the law or biometrics. An AI used as a safety component or to profile an employee’s work performance may be treated that way, too. The E.U.’s AI Act subjects such AIs to certification, scrutiny of the data used in training, post-market monitoring and many other burdens.
So, is Hefring Marine’s AI “high-risk”? Hefring Marine’s AI touches on several aspects: It’s designed to improve safety; it gives operational guidance, and it can be used to track a captain’s low performance if, e.g., they stray from optimum ship handling. Arguably, it also plays a role in infrastructure, which is defined as a critical “high-risk” AI sector.
Then there is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the E.U.’s personal data protection law. More than 1,000 American websites, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, still block access to E.U.-based IP addresses since they do not wish to comply with GDPR’s many rules. For AI, any training data associated with an individual, like our seasoned captain from earlier, would likely be classified as personal data and thus be subject to GDPR.
Depending on how case law develops, this could make it increasingly difficult – maybe even impossible – to train AI models in Europe or to collect European training data for that purpose.
Decision Time
Humans are now not the only sophisticated intelligence on Earth. Should we embrace AI in every walk of life – even in shipping? Or try to constrain AI, like the E.U.?
The good news: Since it’s us who created this new intelligence, we get to decide.
One month after two aging coastal tankers broke up near the Kerch Strait, their cargoes of heavy fuel oil continue to contaminate beaches in Crimea and Krasnodar, and Russian authorities have decided to ramp up the the response.
Last month, the aging river-sea tanker Volgoneft 212 sank in a severe storm about five nautical miles outside of the Kerch Strait. The tanker Volgoneft 239 went aground off Taman shortly after, and it gradually broke up and began leaking its cargo. The two tankers were each carrying thousands of tonnes of mazut, a Russian grade of heavy fuel oil; Russian officials claim that the majority of the sludgy cargo did not spill, but mazut has been washing up around the region for weeks in significant quantities. Both vessels were more than 50 years old, and the head of Russia's maritime trade union told state outlet TASS that they were never designed for the rough conditions of the Kerch Strait in a winter storm; the masters of both vessels have been arrested and charged, but the remainder of the aging river-sea tanker fleet continues to trade in the area without interruption.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the spill "one of the most serious environmental challenges" that Russia has recently encountered. The port of Taman is particularly affected, according to Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov, as it is nearest to the wreck of the Volgoneft-239, which continues to leak. The remaining fuel in the damaged tanker's stern section will be pumped off, Kurenkov said.
After weeks of citizen complaints, a new federal emergency task force has been set up to deal with the crisis. Local volunteers have reported limited support from the government for heavy cleanup on the tourist beaches of the Krasnodar region, which have borne the brunt of the impact. Over 10,000 people have joined the cleanup effort, and more than 80,000 tonnes of sand-oil mix have been collected to date - but volunteer efforts to shovel and bag the oiled beach sand have been spoiled in some places by re-spillage of unremoved waste.
The environmental hazard from the spill is significant enough that Russia may decide to ban the sale of fish caught in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov - though no ban has been implemented yet. Wildlife impacts are significant, with region-wide reports of oiled seabirds and dozens of reported deaths of dolphins.
The ocean absorbs more than 90% of the atmosphere’s excess heat trapped by human-emitted greenhouse gases. It plays a vital role in mitigating the climate crisis and our health relies on that of the ocean. But often, it is simply considered a place to extract useful resources such as food and minerals.
The charitable research institute Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams) recently voted to make the ocean a trustee on its board, represented either by a specific person or a working group that can help hold the organization to account and speak up for the ocean’s interests. The Conversation spoke to Sams’ director, Nicholas Owens, a professor of marine science, about why he thinks this step could help charities, organizations, and businesses make decisions that are healthier for the ocean – and the planet.
How can the ocean be a board member?
The move to empower the ocean as a “board trustee” mirrors legal innovations, such as the recognition that rivers and ecosystems have legal “personhood” in countries such as Ecuador, India and New Zealand. In 2022, the Scottish beauty company, Faith in Nature, elected “nature” to its board, while adventure clothing brand Patagonia announced that Earth would be the US company’s only shareholder.
Human activities are disrupting marine ecosystems at an alarming rate. But most of these human activities are, to a significant degree, controlled by decisions taken in boardrooms. By considering how decisions will affect the ocean as a whole, our board can hopefully make significant improvements and inspire other organizations to prioritize ocean health and sustainable marine development above resource extraction or financial gain.
How significant is this move?
I believe that electing the ocean to be a trustee of Sams could be one of the most important decisions in our history. It challenges outdated models of governance and champions a future where the ocean’s voice is central to decision-making.
This might sound like a trivial gimmick, even whimsical. But after several months of careful discussion and debate, the trustees and I are convinced that even with a strong empathy for ocean conservation and a well-informed understanding of marine environmental matters, the decisions we tend to make are anthropocentric.
This is a fundamental step change. It’s a reminder to consider this extra dimension every time a decision is made at board level and to ensure that an ocean-centric perspective seeps into everything we do.
Swimming, sailing, even just building a sandcastle - the ocean benefits our physical and mental wellbeing. Curious about how a strong coastal connection helps drive marine conservation, scientists are diving in to investigate the power of blue health.
Why does a research institute run by and for humans need an ocean-centric perspective?
Human interests are usually given precedence, and concern is limited to the impact on the ocean rather than the long-term interests of the ocean. This anthropocentric approach is near universal.
Take, for example, the UN’s “ocean decade”, a major global research initiative that aims to unlock “the science we need for the ocean we want”. While the project is worthy and ambitious, the pronoun “we” is telling.
Some of the UN’s ocean decade ambitions are ocean-centric, at least in part, but most are focused on the food we take from the sea, the pollution we sometimes allow to enter the sea, and the marine urbanization we intend to develop offshore. While the ocean decade (from 2021 to 2030) is a magnificent way to mobilize the international marine science community, even the best-intentioned ambitions invariably prioritize human benefits.
So if this isn’t a gimmick, how will your board meetings now differ? Who will be speaking up for the ocean?
Our internal working group is currently deciding how to practically operate. For example, choosing between appointing one person (perhaps, an environmental lawyer) or a larger working committee to represent the voice of the ocean at each board meeting. Whatever the outcome, trustees will be holding our organisation to account from a less anthropocentric perspective.
More widely, this move has already started shifting the sorts of conversations our teams are having on a daily basis. From a research perspective, we’ve always been ethical, but now, this can be a catalyst for a deeper cultural change. I’m proud that lots of our staff are excited to work for an organisation that is taking this more considered approach.
What does it mean for your researchers and your marine research?
We already have teams focusing on the blue economy, investigating how best we can live alongside ocean ecosystems sustainably and mindfully without causing harm. But, some of the debates we have will change and affect the types of marine research we carry out in the future.
Take our deep sea research, for example. We carry out research to investigate deep-sea ecosystems. The results of our studies can be used for many purposes, including to inform the debate about deep sea mining licences.
If our research is not doing any harm, perhaps it’s fine for us to take samples and further investigate what’s there. But – and this certainly does take a leap in thinking – what would the ocean say about this? Should even research into such contentious topics be carried out?
This is a different way of looking at this argument, from a more neutral and less ego-centric perspective. By becoming more sensitive to the needs of the ocean environment, our suite of research interests may well evolve slightly in the future.
Could it lead to any negative consequences for the research institute?
Our current ethical policy is based on conventional norms. Taking an ocean-centric perspective could lead to different outcomes. If followed genuinely, this approach could result in poorer short-term financial performance. But we’re prepared to make a possible short-term sacrifice to ensure more positive outcomes for the ocean in the future.
Electing an ocean trustee is not just a practical step. It is a philosophical statement. By recognizing that humans are part of nature and not separate from it, this challenges anthropocentric models of governance that prioritize human interests over the natural world.
Our society’s survival depends on the health of the planet’s ecosystems. This philosophy is deeply rooted in many Indigenous cultures that consider nature a partner, not a commodity.
Anna Turns is Senior Environment Editor at The Conversation. Since studying biology, Anna has worked in the media for more than two decades, from TV production to magazine journalism and radio broadcasting. As a freelance environmental journalist, she has written regularly for many national publications including The Guardian, BBC Future, New Scientist and Positive News with a focus on solutions.
This article appears courtesy of The Conversation and may be found in its original form here.
The tragic loss of bulk carrier Edmund Fitzgerald is set to be permanently engraved in a marker, five decades after it sank with the loss of all hands.
On the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior, a group in Superior, Wisconsin, called the Friends of the Fitz is seeking to raise $7,000 to purchase a Wisconsin Historical Society marker to honor the bulker and her crew.
The marker would be installed on Barkers Island, since Superior was the last port of call for Edmund Fitzgerald. The story of the vessel's loss is a maritime legend in the Great Lakes: the bulker sank on the evening of November 10, 1975, during a particularly rough storm on Lake Superior. There were no survivors amongst the ship’s 29 crew.
Plans to erect the marker come days after Superior Mayor Jim Paine proclaimed 2025 as the “Year of the Fitz”, setting the stage for commemorative events to remember the sinking of the ship, which was a constant presence on Lake Superior for 17 years. Her wreck is located some 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan.
Built in 1958, the 729-foot-long Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest and fastest Great Lakes ship of her era. Sometimes called the Mighty Fitz or Big Fitz, the ship set multiple records for the largest season-hauls and was the first lake freighter built to the maximum St. Lawrence Seaway size. The vessel had a capacity of 26,000 tonnes.
During her productive life of service, Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other Great Lakes ports. Her tragic sinking occurred in 1975 after embarking on a voyage from Superior, Wisconsin, near Duluth carrying a full cargo of ore pellets with Captain Ernest M. McSorley in command.
On November 10, the ship was caught in a severe storm on Lake Superior, with near hurricane-force winds and waves up to 35 feet (11 meters). In these extreme conditions, she took on water and sank quickly, with the loss of all hands. Investigators were later determined that the probable cause of the accident was the sudden massive flooding of the cargo hold due to the collapse of one or more hatch covers.
“There are so many memorials out there and ways that other communities have remembered their real part in the Edmund Fitzgerald’s history and Superior is no different,” said Jenny Van Sickle, Superior City Councilor. “So the Friends of the Fitz are raising money in order to purchase and install our own official marker here in Superior.”
The historical marker will be another piece of artifact that will help keep the memories of Edmund Fitzgerald and her crew alive for decades. It will join the ship’s 200-pound bronze bell, which was recovered in July 1995 and is now on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. The ship’s bow anchor is on display at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum.
The West had better think carefully about how it would handle China imposing a nominally civil quarantine on Taiwan, because that’s the tactic that increasingly looks like an opening move for Beijing in taking control of the island.
A quarantine, imposing limited controls on access to the island, offered strong advantages for China even before Taiwan said in October that a blockade, surrounding it with forces to cut off all access, would be an act of war. Taiwan’s statement means China is even more likely to choose quarantine as a first step.
This use of the word ‘quarantine’ was coined in an important Center for Strategic and International Studies report last year. The authors foresaw that the Chinese government might ban only certain types of goods from entering Taiwan, or it could forbid ships from using a certain port. The measures would be enforced by nominally non-military forces, such as the China Coastguard.
Conceivably, China could see whether it could get away once with a quarantine action, then, noting success in asserting its authority, do it again and gradually tighten restrictions until they turned into a blockade—salami slicing, as it does in so many areas of international affairs.
First among the inherent advantages of quarantine for Beijing is that, unlike more warlike action, it brings no commitment to go all the way, to conquer or be defeated. It would raise no great expectation among the highly nationalist Chinese people of imminent conquest of Taiwan. So if the measure met stiff resistance, the Chinese Communist Party could back away from it, declaring that some civil administrative objective had been achieved.
Yet forcing it to back down would be difficult for Taiwan and its friends, which is another advantage of the quarantine tactic. They would have to escalate with warships and possibly armed force to stop a China Coast Guard ship from intercepting a freighter, for example. This would put Taiwan and the West in the unfortunate position of looking like the initiators of military conflict. On the other hand, if Taiwan and the West did nothing, and intimidated shipping companies mostly went along with the quarantine, China’s narrative that it had control over Taiwan would be strengthened.
Taiwanese Minister of National Defence Wellington Koo said in October that Taiwan would consider a blockade an act of war and would respond on a war footing after massive Chinese military drills were held near the island.
A quarantine would probably cause little or no disruption to China’s own trade, whereas the risk of military confrontation in a blockade could frighten ship owners into avoiding the Taiwan Strait and Chinese ports near it. This would severely affect China’s economy: most shipments that pass through the Taiwan Strait are Chinese imports and exports.
A quarantine would probably involve no dramatic announcements from Beijing. Instead, China could claim it merely needed to expand customs procedures in the Taiwan Strait and surrounding waters where China believes it has jurisdiction. This might involve the Chinese coast guard carrying out inspections of ships and boarding non-Chinese vessels to inspect their paperwork. Vessels that refuse to comply could be forced to turn back or even be hit with water cannons. The coast guard could then restrict vital imports that enter Taiwan, such as energy products. This could cripple the Taiwanese economy and have the effect of shattering the Taiwanese people’s morale and willingness to resist Beijing.
Throughout 2024, China’s coast guard increased intrusive patrols in waters around Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen archipelago, which is close to China.
In a possible early sign of a quarantine tactic, China’s coast guard in February 2024 intercepted a Taiwanese sight-seeing ferry that was sailing around Kinmen’s main island during a period when cross-strait tensions were running high. Chinese coast guard officers boarded the Taiwanese boat and asked to inspect the documentation of the crew, before disembarking a while later. Then, in mid-May, the Chinese state media outlet China Daily said, ‘In the future, this ‘Kinmen model’ of law enforcement inspections can also be applied to Matsu and Penghu islands, and even the entire Taiwan Strait.’
Among the difficult options for Taiwanese and Western response might be beefing up of Taiwan’s own coast guard, which is vastly smaller than China’s, and training it to respond to such tactics.
The US could also impose financial sanctions on China if it imposed a quarantine and persuade other democracies to join in. In doing so, the West would be hitting back at China using tactics that, like China’s quarantine, fall short of war. This might also meet the incoming Trump administration’s goal of weakening China, which it views as an economic competitor.
Whatever the response will be, plans are needed. Quarantine is so attractive a measure for China that Taiwan and its friends must be prepared.
Jane Rickards, a journalist and frequent contributor to The Economist, has lived in Taiwan since 2004.
This article appears courtesy of The Strategist and may be found in its original form here.
On Sunday, Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority rescued eight crewmembers from a sinking tanker just off Pedra Branca, a lighthouse installation at the eastern entrance to the Singapore Strait - the second sinking in two days in the Singaporean search and rescue zone.
At about 1540 hours, the master of the small product tanker Silver Sincere reported that the vessel was taking on water and that the crew was abandoning ship. All crewmembers safely evacuated into a liferaft, and they were saved by a good Samaritan freighter, the Intan Daya 368. All survivors were in good health when delivered to shore at Batu Ampar, Indonesia.
With search and rescue complete, the MPA has transitioned to a pollution-control response for the Silver Sincere. Salvage tugs and a spill-abatement vessel have been activated and dispatched to the scene; as of yet, no oil pollution has been reported.
So far, the busy traffic lanes of the Singapore Strait have not been affected, but the MPA is broadcasting a safety advisory to shipping to stay clear of the wreck site.
Just one day earlier, a good Samaritan ship rescued the crew of a sinking Vietnamese freighter in the South China Sea, off the coast of peninsular Malaysia but within Singapore's vast search and rescue zone. The yard-and-stay freighter Dolphin 18 sent a distress call on Saturday morning and reported that they were going down. The call was received by the 2,200 TEU container feeder Nicolai Maersk, which reported it to the Singapore MPA Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) at about 0700 hours. Nikolai Maersk safely rescued 18 crewmembers from their liferafts, and all were in good health. Dolphin 18 was reported sunk.
Singapore conglomerate ST Engineering is making forays into the market for specialized vessels supporting offshore operations after winning a contract for the construction of a walk-to-work (W2W) ship for the oil and gas industry.
The company announced it has secured the contract for the design and construction of the vessel for a leading oil and gas company. ST Engineering did not name the customer nor the price, but highlighted the importance of the contract in its quest for a bigger market for specialized vessels.
“Building a W2W vessel demands specialized expertise in marine engineering, advanced systems integration and dynamic positioning – areas where we excel. Being selected after a rigorous evaluation process is a testament to our expertise, dedication to quality and compliance with global standards,” said Tan Leong Peng, ST Engineering President, Marine.
The vessel, which will be 97 meters and able to accommodate 106 persons, will be purpose-built. Completion is slated for the first quarter of 2027.
ST Engineering’s determination to capture a bigger market for specialized vessels stems from a belief that in the long term, oil remains integral in meeting energy demands. The winning of the W2W contract comes just months after ST Engineering opened a new shipyard that was acquired at a cost of $95 million to support the growth of its marine business and maintain its competitiveness in the ship repair segment.
Opened in September last year, the new yard will enable the company to explore new market segments, including offshore renewables projects, offshore support vessels for the oil and gas industry, as well as refits, upgrades and comprehensive operations and support services. It is designed to handle larger, more complex projects, and its expanded capacity is expected to shorten turnaround times.
Two U.S. Treasury-sanctioned ships have been the focus of attention for the maritime community interested in Iranian spy ship activity. But these are not the only Iranian ships involved in intelligence activity contributing to attacks on merchant shipping.
Firstly the MV Saviz, and then the MV Behshad, maintained a picket position, stationary off the Dahlak Bank just inside Eritrean territorial waters in the Red Sea, from late 2016 until January 2024. Both ships are controlled by the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line Group (IRISL). But their unusual patterns of activity, reporting in the Israeli press and the observed presence on-board of uniformed personnel, strongly suggested that the vessels were being operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy (Nesda).
This designation was effectively confirmed when the Saviz was damaged by limpet mines on April 6, 2021, an attack subsequently acknowledged by Israel. Saviz limped home to Bandar Abbas, and was replaced on station by her sister ship, the Behshad. The Behshad too was forced from this position in January 2024, and took up station instead in the Gulf of Aden. According to U.S. official speaking to ABC News the U.S. subsequently conducted a cyberattack against the Behshad, which abandoned its post off Djibouti and returned to Bandar Abbas in April 2024.
Both the Saviz and the Behshad will have played an important role in the collection of intelligence and its dissemination to Iran’s Houthi allies, in support of Houthi attacks on merchant shipping. Both vessels are equipped with standard maritime radars, one mounted forward atop a mast, a second mounted aft with a complex aerial array unusually high above the bridge, with a third radar or antenna protected by a radome on a second bridge mast. A detection range of 50 nm could be expected from such an array.
Through a satellite receiver, the ships could also receive one-meter resolution imagery, with a less than 24-hour time delay, from Iran’s own Khayyam satellite (and probably also from the Russian Kanopus-V imagery satellite constellation). Both ships could also communicate with the Houthis’ fleet of fishing boat intelligence collectors, or launch its own small boats for scouting purposes.
Fusing this all-source intelligence with data from aggregated Automatic Identification System (AIS) information, gathered from those ships traveling with their AIS systems turned on, both ships would be able to maintain an accurate maritime area activity plot, albeit not sufficiently timely to be used directly for target engagement by missiles or drones without closing approach target acquisition systems.
With the Saviz and Behshad now effectively chased away from the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden area, the same intelligence collection role has now likely been passed to Iran’s regular Navy (Nedaja), whose grey paint provides a degree of sovereign protection, although not necessarily from the limpet mine threat. Currently, the Nedaja presence in the area is being maintained by the 100th Flotilla, consisting of the frigate IRINS Dena (F75) and logistics supply ship IRINS Bushehr (L422), due rotation shortly.
Saviz and Behshad, valuable assets still, have now been redeployed to safer waters. Behshad now appears to be operating in the Straits of Hormuz area, usually off Qeshm, giving greater depth to Iran’s coastal defenses in this sensitive area. Saviz is believed to still be on station in the northern Arabian Sea, where she was implicated in the attack by an Iranian Shahed-136 drone on the Indian-crewed chemical tanker MV Chem Pluto off Porbandar on December 23, 2023. In the follow-up to the attack, the Indian Navy announced that they had boarded the Saviz in international waters but found nothing incriminating, a bold and resolute action for which no supporting evidence was provided and which was not accompanied by any complaint from Iran – but which appears to have brought similar such attacks to an end.
Also boarded and searched in the Indian follow-up was the IRISL container ship MV Artenos, suggesting that the Indian authorities believed this Iranian ship also had a role in the attack. MV Artenos is an active merchantman and made 27 port calls in 2024, sailing normally between the Gulf and India. It was also spotted in suspicious circumstances in the same month southeast of Socotra, andmay therefore be acting in a covert intelligence auxiliary role.
Another Iranian container ship, the MV Shiba, also IRISL-owned and US-sanctioned, was tracked by UK commercial intelligence firm MariTrace behaving suspiciously in January 2024. En route from Jebel Ali towards the Suez Canal, Shiba paused for 8 hours off Bandar-e Jask on January 10. Resuming her voyage, her path would have crossed that of the tanker Suez Rajan, which was seized by the Nedaja the next day before being diverted to Jask.
MV Shiba left from her normal commercial routing again several days later, leaving the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor, sailing southwards to sail in close company with the Behshad for several days off Djibouti. The two ships were joined by IRINS Alborz (F-72) and IRINS Bushehr (422). Again MV Shiba is active commercially, having made 43 port calls in 2024, but on tenuous evidence also appears to have an auxiliary intelligence role, well disguised by her legitimate commercial activity. Other Iranian-owned merchantmen are likely to have a similar reporting role.
Much of Iran’s prosecution of asymmetric warfare makes an assumption that, whatever its own behaviors, its adversaries will be loath to break international conventions and the International Law of the Sea. However, when those adversaries do take resolute action to protect their interests, the Iranians are exposed as defenseless and are deterred. In this context the Nesda has not yet deployed its drone carriers Shahid Mahdavi (C110-3) and Shahid Bagheri (C110-4); with their drone and missile arsenals, these highly vulnerable converted merchant ships pose a substantial threat – but only when they are not robustly challenged.
Chile has launched a national naval shipbuilding policy, which will see the navy utilize domestic shipyards during the ongoing fleet renewal program. President Gabriel Boric signed the policy last week during a visit to the state-owned shipyard Asmar in Talcahuano port city.
In June last year, Boric instructed the Ministries of Defense and Economy, together with the Chilean Navy, to formulate a naval construction policy. The aim is to consolidate the country’s defense industry as Chilean Navy pivots to sourcing naval platforms in domestic yards.
Recently, Asmar announced that it plans to begin construction of the first frigate for the Chilean Navy in 2032. “Asmar has tremendous experience in shipbuilding and it has been building auxiliary ships of different types for more than 60 years. But we want to build our own frigates in the next decade. We will be responsible for the detailed engineering and construction of the frigate. However, we also require collaboration with associated companies for the integration of necessary systems,” said Rear Admiral José Miguel Hernández, Director of Asmar.
According to Boric, the signing of the Naval Construction Policy is more about affirming Chile’s sovereignty. This will help reduce dependence on foreign yards for critical defense platforms. In addition, the shipbuilding policy will help in fast-tracking delivery of four multipurpose vessels, which the Chilean Navy procured as part of the Escotillón IV project.
The first vessel under this project is nearing completion at Asmar yard and is scheduled to begin sea trials this year. On Friday, the Chilean Navy announced that the construction of the third and fourth vessel under the project would start, with the Naval Construction Policy now in place.
The Chilean Navy launched the Escotillón IV project in 2022 as part of its efforts to modernize and improve the deployment capabilities of its transport and logistics command, Comanfitran. The four multipurpose units are designed to operate in the Pacific, as well as navigate Antarctic waters during the summer months. Further, the vessels will help carry out naval logistics support, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance and disaster response.
Chile has already demonstrated capacity to build large vessels in local yards, with the commissioning of its new icebreaker Almirante Viel last year. The successful delivery of the Escotillón IV project will mark another milestone for the Chilean shipbuilding sector.
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