Open Satellite Data • Real-time Vessel Tracking • Cable Security
The "gray zone" refers to the ambiguous space between peace and war. Around Taiwan, this includes: fishing fleets crossing maritime boundaries, vessels disabling AIS transponders to become "dark ships," maritime militia disguised as fishing boats, and anomalous vessel behavior closely correlated with military exercises.
These activities fall short of traditional military conflict but continuously erode maritime order, drain monitoring resources, and may create conditions for further action. By cross-referencing satellite imagery and AIS data, we can track these covert maritime activities.
Over 95% of Taiwan's international internet traffic relies on submarine cables. These cables pass through the Taiwan Strait and surrounding waters — precisely where gray zone activity is most intense.
Anchor dragging by fishing trawlers is a leading cause of cable damage. When unidentified vessels operate near cable routes, they pose a potential threat. Our map layers overlay submarine cable routes with vessel positions to help identify risks.
Real-time vessel positions, dark vessel detections, cable routes & fishing hotspots
SAR satellite detection of vessels without AIS, regional analysis
Trend charts, military exercise prediction indicators & correlations
Track playback + gray-zone events, focus narrative, area analysis, going-dark & export
Chinese fishing vessel activity by province around Taiwan
Detect vessels changing names, call signs, or IMO numbers
Shadow fleet gray zone threats, UNCLOS legal gaps & international cooperation
Start from the live monitoring map to see real-time vessel positions, dark-vessel detections, and submarine cable routes around Taiwan.
Use the layer controls to show or hide vessels, dark vessels, submarine cables, and fishing hotspots — focus on what matters to you.
In the sidebar or bottom panel, browse vessels ranked by threat score. Click any vessel to see its detailed risk indicators.
Open the AIS track animation to replay vessel paths over recent days and spot going-dark, loitering, or ship-to-ship behavior.
On the statistics page, review dark-vessel trend charts and military-exercise prediction indicators to read the overall picture.
A dark vessel is a ship that has switched off its AIS (Automatic Identification System) transponder so it cannot be tracked by ordinary vessel-tracking systems. This site detects them using SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite imagery and cross-references the detections against AIS data to surface targets that have deliberately "gone dark."
Vessel positions come from the Taiwan Port Bureau's public AIS feed; dark-vessel detections come from Global Fishing Watch SAR satellite imagery; and the threat-scoring methodology is based on the CSIS "Signals in the Swarm" report on gray-zone analysis. All sources are open-source intelligence (OSINT).
AIS vessel data refreshes every 2 hours; the full pipeline (dark-vessel detection, threat scoring, track analysis) runs every 12 hours; and statistical reports are compiled weekly. All timestamps are in UTC.
The site uses a weighted 8-criterion scoring system: loitering at low speed near submarine cables, zigzag navigation, frequent name/call-sign changes (identity manipulation), long AIS gaps (going dark), AIS position spoofing, ship-to-ship (STS) transfers, and more. Vessels that cross the score threshold are flagged and listed.
Over 95% of Taiwan's international internet traffic relies on submarine cables that pass densely through the Taiwan Strait. Anchor dragging by trawlers is a leading cause of cable damage, so unidentified vessels loitering near cable routes pose an infrastructure-security threat.
No. This is an independent open-source intelligence (OSINT) project. All data comes from public sources, and the analysis methods and code are published on GitHub. It does not represent any government or official body.
This project uses multi-source satellite data and AI analysis to monitor "gray zone" activities in waters around Taiwan in real time. We track "dark vessels" (ships with AIS turned off), anomalous vessel behavior in military exercise zones, and maritime activity patterns potentially linked to military exercises — providing an open, transparent data foundation for maritime security research and policy.
Research by Global Fishing Watch shows that many vessels disable their Automatic Identification System (AIS), disappearing from public monitoring systems. These "dark vessels" are often involved in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing) and may also be linked to gray zone military operations.
This project uses the same core technology as Global Fishing Watch — Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery analysis. SAR works day and night, in any weather, penetrating cloud cover to detect vessels at sea.
The system detects potential submarine cable threats through multi-layered suspicious vessel identification:
The system integrates data from the following sources, updated every 6 hours:
From submarine cable fundamentals to Taiwan's enforcement challenges — six articles covering the full picture of the invisible underwater war.