On 26 January, staff in an office in Mumbai received an urgent email from a crew member aboard a tanker off the coast of Singapore.
The email, purportedly written on behalf of five colleagues aboard the tanker sailing under the name Beeta, contained a litany of complaints: crew members, it was alleged, had not been paid and were being treated like animals; and provisions were running low.
The staff in Mumbai worked for the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), the world's leading organisation representing seafarers, and were used to dealing with complaints from all corners of the globe. But what caught their eye was the fact that the emails hadn't just been copied to multiple ITF offices but also to sanctions enforcement bodies in several countries.
The vessel is sanctioned and blacklisted, the sailor wrote. He said he had discovered that the vessel calling itself the Beeta was, in fact, an American-sanctioned tanker called the Gale.
The sailor and his colleagues were desperate to leave. I've been at sea for many years, he told the BBC when we contacted him. I know what's right and wrong.
Inadvertently, the crew member had found himself involved in a problem at the heart of some of today's most contentious geopolitical issues: a surging number of tankers transporting Russian and Iranian oil operate outside maritime rules, using a variety of methods to conceal their identities.
This "shadow fleet," as it's known, is growing fast. Estimates vary, but the latest data from the monitoring group TankerTrackers.com indicates the fleet currently consists of 1,468 vessels, roughly three times its size at the time of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago.
Tankers, such as the Gale, now account for roughly 18% of the total internationally trading tanker fleet, carrying around 17% of all seaborne crude, according to Michelle Wiese Bockmann, senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward AI.
The phenomenon first emerged in the 2010s, primarily as North Korea and Iran sought to evade international sanctions. Today, it leaves western governments scrambling to find effective responses.
As the international community grapples with these issues, the fate of seamen aboard shadow vessels raises further concerns regarding labor abuses and the legality of operations. Reports suggest that the terms under which these crew members are employed are often vague, misleading, and unsafe, leading to severe mistreatment.
The lives of seafarers aboard shadow fleet vessels highlight the shortcomings in enforcing maritime laws, as the use of antiquated ships with deceptive practices outlines a critical challenge facing the global shipping industry. Without unified action and rigorous enforcement of regulations, these shadow vessels threaten not only economic interests but also regional stability.
