Why Should We Care About "Dark Fleets"?

Ray and Jim welcome Dr. Sal Mercogliano, maritime historian and host of the popular YouTube channel What’s Going on with Shipping?, to talk about how “dark fleets”--or what he calls "parallel fleets"--challenge maritime law and Indo-Pacific security by evading international shipping regulations and sanctions against malign actors.

Sal talks about how Russia is the country most associated with dark fleets, because sanctions have prompted the country to create a parallel fleet using third-country “flags of convenience”. Many of these countries are magnets for bad actors because they have very lax standards and regulations for registration.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which is supposed to oversee shipping worldwide, has struggled to enforce and regulate activities at sea, which remains a lawless space.

One particularly thorny issue is illegal ship-to-ship transfers. Besides enabling sanctions evasion, these transfers also pose environmental risks as they frequently result in spills.

Sal also talks about the state of the U.S. shipping industry, both of which are alarmingly small. This presents a national security vulnerability for a great power with global interests, especially as China dominates global shipping and owns over 20 percent of the world’s ships. He argues for bipartisan legislation to reform America’s merchant marine.

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