Free to read
A rotating selection from the paid serviceShadow fleet: Brussels answers on the ships it didn't list
The European Union can sanction a company for running shadow fleet tankers without barring the tankers themselves, the EU's foreign affairs spokesperson has said, after the Maritime Watch reported that four ships managed by a sanctioned Turkish operator had moved to an unlisted…
Read the article →Shadow fleet: the ships the EU didn't list
The European Union sanctioned a Turkish tanker operator on 15 June for running three ships it said lacked insurance and hid their movements while carrying…
Shadow fleet's Dubai carousel kept Iranian network ahead of sanctions lists
Iran's largest sanctions-evasion network passed its tankers through 21 European port inspections between 2022 and 2025. On the day of each call,…
On film
Built from Mariel dataNot all tankers in the “shadow fleet” trade are ageing rust-buckets. Here is the story of one that was just five years old when she moved out of Europe and joined the Russia trade.
She was built in 2018 as Crudesun and flew the Liberian flag. Port state control inspected her eleven times, from South Korea to Canada. She was never detained.
In October 2023 she changed name, flag and owner in a single month. She was never inspected in a Western port again.
This film follows her through four names and six flags, through sanctions from the US, EU, Switzerland, the UK and Canada, and through a sea-drone strike in the Black Sea, to her return to service under the Russian flag in 2026.
It is built from Mariel, Maritime Watch’s shadow-fleet database, and from publicly available records.
Music: Dmitrii Kolesnikov and Nikita Kondrashev. Sound effects: Joanne Stone and Soumages, via Pixabay.
Where do “shadow fleet” tankers come from?
One tanker, four names: how a ship that spent five years in the Western fleet became a sanctioned “shadow fleet” tanker. A short film built from Mariel data.
Open the film page →Mariel
Mariel is our own shadow-fleet database. It follows ships, the companies behind them and the sanctions lists, ship by ship and date by date, so a single query can show what happened to a fleet before and after a listing.
A typical piece of Mariel work: an operator is sanctioned, and Mariel traces where each of its ships went next, under which new manager, at which address, and which ports they called at afterwards.
- When a ship operator is sanctioned, where do its ships go next?
- Which listed ships were still calling at European ports after the listing?
- Who managed, flagged and classed a ship before anyone listed it?
- Which companies share an office with a sanctioned one?
What subscribers get
Every story as it is published
Each article reaches your inbox the day it runs, ahead of the weekly Monitor.
The documents behind it
The Council, Commission and Parliament papers a story rests on, attached to the article.
The archive
Searchable from 2021, tagged by topic, institution, geography and actors. Earlier coverage, back to 2010, on request.
Shadow-fleet reporting
Stories from Mariel on the ships, managers and listings the sanctions regimes miss.
Try the full service
Trial access to the full publication. Email the editor.
Latest Monitor
All past issues →Maritime Watch Monitor, 6 October 2026
Washington now has a ready-made shortlist for shadow-fleet sanctions, and Europe wrote most of it. A US law signed on 18 September lets the President treat an allied listing as prima facie evidence against a ship. The allies…
Read the digest →