When Ships Go Dark, What Are We Really Seeing?
by Dr. Raymon Krishnan,
Editor-at-Large, CargoNOW
As a Consultant, I look at freight rates and container volumes across markets in Asia and try to determine what they are really telling us. Is a rate movement temporary noise, a seasonal phenomenon or the beginning of a structural shift? Is a change in volumes an isolated event or is it part of a pattern that has appeared before? That work recently made me look more closely at another kind of data – AIS vessel-tracking data. Freight rates and container volumes tell us about markets and AIS tells us where ships are.
When I started looking at the growing number of vessels that are disappearing from tracking systems from the Strait of Hormuz to Somalia and elsewhere the question became increasingly interesting. What happens when the data we use to understand maritime behaviour becomes incomplete?
When darkness becomes normal
The current conflict in the Straits of Hormuz has fundamentally changed how vessels move through the world’s most strategically important energy chokepoints. Kpler reported that between March 1 and May 19, only 6.4% of the 895 vessel crossings it tracked through Hormuz followed the IMO-designated Traffic Separation Scheme. Some 41% were classified as dark or unknown routing patterns, with AIS switched off. More recently, the problem has become even more visible.
Reuters reported on August 24 that fewer than 20 commodity vessels transited Hormuz over the preceding weekend. It also noted that some vessels had their transponders switched off, meaning that the actual number of crossings could be higher than the tracking data suggested. Over the week ending August 21, Kpler recorded 89 vessels exiting and 103 entering the Straits which is around 90% below pre-conflict levels. This creates a fascinating problem for anyone who relies on data to understand markets and movements.
What we cannot see still exists.
A vessel disappearing from AIS does not mean the vessel has disappeared physically. It means that one source of information about that vessel has disappeared.
In a conflict zone, a ship may deliberately reduce its electronic visibility because advertising its identity, position or destination could increase its exposure to attack or detention. Reuters has reported that vessels in the wider Middle East have increasingly switched off public AIS tracking signals for security reasons. So AIS darkness alone cannot automatically be interpreted as suspicious behaviour however if legitimate vessels are going dark how do we distinguish legitimate darkness from deliberate concealment?
The Asana question
The recent resurgence of Somali piracy provides another dimension. The tanker Asana, seized off Yemen in July and subsequently believed to be held by Somali pirates, stopped transmitting its position on July 17. On its own, there is nothing particularly surprising about that. A hijacked vessel going dark is exactly what we might expect but Pole Star Global’s analysis reveals something more interesting.
Asana had a history of extended tracking gaps before the hijacking. Pole Star identified gaps of 102, 96, 48, 37, 32, 29, 27 and 24 days during 2024 and 2025 and consequently classified its tracking history as “Critical.”
Those historical gaps do not prove that anything illicit was taking place but they do raise an important analytical question. Should a repeated history of prolonged tracking gaps itself be considered a risk indicator? This question moves us from tracking towards behavioural analysis.
Three types of darkness
In Hormuz, a legitimate commercial vessel may deliberately go dark because broadcasting its position creates a security risk.
Off Somalia, a vessel may go dark because it has been attacked or its historical tracking behaviour may contain information about its vulnerability.
In the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, the problem is different again. The waterway remains one of Asia’s most persistent maritime-security hotspots, with Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) recording 21 piracy and armed-robbery incidents there in the first half of 2026, representing 60% of all such incidents recorded across Asia during the period. Most incidents in the Strait are better described as armed robbery rather than piracy in the strict legal sense. The threat is predominantly opportunistic, occurring in an extraordinarily congested maritime environment.
Three very different situations yet all three present the same fundamental challenge. How do we distinguish normal behaviour from anomalous behaviour when the data is incomplete and how can Logistics Managers interpret these signals meaningfully and accurately?
From visibility to behaviour
The maritime industry has invested heavily in visibility. We have AIS, satellite imagery, port-call data, ownership databases, sanctions databases, vessel registries and increasingly sophisticated maritime-intelligence platforms, but having more data does not automatically give us better intelligence. The real value comes from connecting the data.
A vessel repeatedly switching off AIS for extended periods, changing flags, changing ownership or management, deviating from established trading patterns and then operating in a high-risk area may tell us something very different.
This is exactly how I approach freight markets. One rate point does not establish a trend. One unusual volume figure does not necessarily indicate a structural change but when rates, volumes, capacity deployment, port activity and historical behaviour begin moving together, the signal becomes much stronger.
The danger of confusing the signal with the reality
Conflict, security concerns and a raft of issues can create darkness. The signal may look identical, but the reasons are not. This is also why the current debate about cargo and energy flows through Hormuz is so revealing.
Reuters has highlighted a significant discrepancy between government estimates of oil volumes passing through the Strait and the much lower volumes identified by commercial vessel-tracking companies. The difference illustrates how quickly conclusions can diverge when the underlying data is incomplete.
The next generation of maritime intelligence
AIS should be combined with satellite imagery, historical voyage patterns, ownership and management information, flag histories, port calls, cargo intelligence, ship-to-ship transfers, sanctions data, geopolitical events and previous incidents.
The objective should not be to create an automated blacklist of vessels that have gone dark. It should be to identify behaviour that is inconsistent with the vessel’s established pattern or with the environment in which it is operating. That is a much more nuanced and much more useful approach to risk.
From Hormuz to Somalia to the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, the maritime industry is being reminded of something that as a data analysts I have to remind myself repeatedly. Absence of data is itself information, but it is not necessarily the information you think it is.
The Role of the Logistics Manager
A logistics manager looking at freight rates and volumes faces a similar challenge. A sudden increase in container rates does not automatically mean demand has surged. Likewise, falling volumes do not necessarily mean that demand has collapsed.
Data does not remove uncertainty. Good analysis exposes it.
The logistics manager’s role is therefore changing. It is no longer enough to ask, “What is the freight rate today?” The Logistician also needs to consider what the data is not showing.
This question may become increasingly important as global supply chains operate through more contested, congested and unpredictable maritime corridors.
From Hormuz to Somalia to the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, the lesson is not simply about maritime security. It is about how we interpret data.
For logistics managers, the real competitive advantage will increasingly come from being able to connect these apparently disconnected signals and the best analysts are not those who have the most data. They are the ones who know which patterns matter and which ones do not. In an increasingly volatile supply chain environment, that may be one of the most important skills a logistics manager can develop.
