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Having AIS on is mandatory. I'm sure turning it off would raise even higher warning flags than just leaving it on while doing your shady stuff.

Regardless, there are satellites covering the area, so you wouldn't get rid of being tracked anyways, would just be a bit slower.

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jeroenhd 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Having AIS on is mandatory, but in practice a lot of ships turn it off regardless. From shadow oil fleets laundering sanctioned oil to fishermen, fake or disabled AIS systems are hardly an exception.

I don't think Russia is trying to hide their sabotage, though. Even with AIS disabled, there's no way European intelligence agencies didn't know what ships were floating above these cables at the time they went down.

This was a warning, not a secret operation.

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bergie 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Having AIS on is mandatory, and in many places taken quite seriously. Last night we sailed from Fuerteventura to Gran Canaria. There was a cargo ship with broken AIS in the area, and the VTS broadcasted their position over VHF every half hour (with DSC all ships alarms and everything)

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giraffe_lady 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Every recreational sailor knows that AIS is "mandatory." It's completely routine to see commercial ships running without it.

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WinstonSmith84 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

With "commercial", I guess you imply fishing vessels doing this to go fishing outside their delimited area. That's different from a massive bulk carrier in the middle of the Baltic

	▲	giraffe_lady 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		No I meant what I said. I've never seen a like supertanker without AIS but I've seen smaller cargo ships, ferries, and specifically in northern europe energy company tenders running without it.

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diggan 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's completely routine to see commercial ships running without it

I think this depends a lot on the location, as different areas seems to make it different levels of "mandatory". Are you speaking about the Baltic Sea specifically based on experience?

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giraffe_lady 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yes. I spent a pandemic summer sailing the north sea, denmark, sweden with a friend. We sailed much less in the baltic and I admittedly kind of mix the north & baltic in my memory but they are very similar regulatory environments re boats so it would surprise me if it was common in one but not the other.

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diggan 6 days ago | parent [-]

> they are very similar regulatory environments re boats so it would surprise me if it was common in one but not the other.

One has Russia and their ports, while the other doesn't. So preparedness and military presence certainly is different between the two at least.

	▲	giraffe_lady 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I defer to your presumably greater baltic sailing experience.

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mistrial9 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

recent statistic : Global Fishing Watch’s study published in Science Advances on November 2, 2022, revealed that:

Over 55,000 suspected intentional disabling events of AIS signals were identified between 2017 and 2019, obscuring nearly 5 million hours of fishing vessel activity. This phenomenon accounts for up to 6% of global fishing vessel activity.