This story was originally Appeared in Hakai Magazine and, Climate Desk collaboration.
A new video was posted on the social media network Telegram showing the smoking area of a large ship: curtains torn, lights broken, ashes and glass scattered on the floor. “This is how you drink on a ship,” says a young Ukrainian deckhand filming the scene, pointing to furniture thrown into a corner. “It’s horrifying.”
A Telegram administrator asked the deckhand if he could tell us the name of the ship. Feliks Bondar replied that the name of the ship changes many times a year. Bondar’s name has been changed for this article. “I don’t even know what name to tell you,” he wrote in Ukrainian. “Our ship was originally named eagleBut in Venezuela, we Matador after that Shoyo Maru. “
In recent months, the chat has been inundated with similar messages: tales of dangerously old ships, operators withholding pay, marooned crew members and owners changing their ships’ names or manipulating the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the global network that allows ships to recognize each other.
More than 8,000 seafarers have joined the Telegram group, some of them recent maritime college graduates and others veterans, all with a shared desire to stay safe on the high seas. Sailors are sharing their stories, naming ships when they can, and collecting information about troubled ships, detailing everything from ships with poor food to ships where crew pay is often late.
However, in recent years, the number of sailors has increased. Being caught up in something unconsciously So-called “shadow fleets,” which smuggle oil for clients in countries like Iran and Russia where strict sanctions limit oil sales, have evolved a social media informant network that’s both a place to find trusted employers and something else: a way for sailors to avoid aiding the opposing side in a war.
As a life The job of a contract seafarer is never easy – workers move frequently from ship to ship, contract to contract and country to country – but the rise of shadow flotillas and Russia’s war in Ukraine brings new kinds of risks.
About a year and a half ago, in early 2023, Bondar tracked down seafarers’ Telegram network after landing a particularly sticky job. After booking a job with a Ukraine-based crewing company, Bondar discovered the name of the ship he’d been assigned to had been blacked out and the AIS had once again been unplugged. A note had been written on the device warning seafarers not to turn it on.
Bondar said that after a six-month voyage smuggling licensed oil to China, the crew was told the next operation would begin in Kozmino, Russia. Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine began while he was at sea and had been going on for more than four months already. Bondar and the other Ukrainians on the crew refused the job of smuggling Russian oil. The ship’s operators allegedly fired them all and abandoned them in the nearest port in China.
