Occupational risk ? Chinese presence surges at Scarborough Shoal

From AMTI CSIS

Midway through 2026, Scarborough Shoal remains the focal point of Philippine-China frictions in the South China Sea, with recent tensions stemming from China’s deployment of floating objects at the shoal, including buoys, floating barriers, and most recently, a temporary research structure.
But new data on ship movements reveals yet another cause for concern at Scarborough: a massive increase in presence from the China Coast Guard (CCG), the backbone of Beijing’s efforts to exercise control over the shoal.

 

A Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) patrol ship maneuvers next to a Filipino fisherman paddling a Philippine flag aboard a motorized wooden boat as they sail towards Scarborough Shoal in the disputed South China Sea, 16 May 2024. 

A civilian-led mission joined by at least a hundred fishermen embarked on Scarborough Shoal in the disputed South China Sea to assert the Philippines’ territorial claim. 

Scarborough Shoal (‘Bajo de Masinloc’ called by Filipino fishermen), a fishing haven shoal within the Philippine maritime territory that China occupied a decade ago, was recently reported to be driving away Filipino fishermen by Chinese coastguard ships. 

EPA/FRANCIS R. MALASIG

 A Look at the Data

To better assess recent activity at Scarborough Shoal, AMTI analyzed automatic identification system (AIS) data around the shoal from January 1 to June 30, 2026.
The data collected focused on documenting the presence of China Coast Guard (CCG), Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), and Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) vessels, as well as instances of interactions between these Chinese and Philippine ships.

The data shows that CCG patrols at Scarborough have significantly increased in 2026, a remarkable feat given that 2025 was already a record year for CCG presence at the shoal.
Through the first six months of 2026, CCG patrols at Scarborough amounted to 933 ship-days, nearly as much as 2025’s entire annual total of 1,099 ship-days (which itself had already doubled from 2024’s total of 516 ship-days).

On a monthly basis, CCG patrol volume increased from an average of 90 ship-days per month in the first half of 2025, to 156 per month in 2026, with ship-days peaking at 216 in May.

Scaborough shoal with the GeoGarage platform (UKHO nautical raster chart)

As has been the case since last year, some CCG operating near Scarborough conducted patrols along, and sometimes over, China’s claimed nine-dash line, positioning themselves to intercept Philippine ships heading toward the shoal.
But in comparison to previous periods, the density of patrol coverage near the shoal has markedly increased.
Multiple CCG ships were often seen coordinating to maintain a perimeter patrol, covering all approaches to Scarborough in an approximately 30 nautical mile radius.
And inside that perimeter, a persistent detachment of 6-8 Chinese maritime militia maintained similar coverage of the area closer to the shoal.

Philippine law enforcement patrols near Scarborough also increased in 2026, though they remained far fewer than those of the CCG.
PCG and BFAR vessels averaged 43 ship-days per month in the first half of 2026 compared to 30 ship-days in the same period last year, an increase of 43 percent.

Encounter between CCG 21563 and the BRP Datu Pagbuaya, and four other vessels on May 27, 2026

The frequent patrols have continued to lead to dangerous encounters between Philippine and Chinese ships.
Data for the first half of 2026 showed 112 days on which an interaction was observed between CCG and PCG/BFAR ships near Scarborough, averaging out to 19 days per month.
And in several instances, including a May 27 encounter between the CCG 21563 and the BRP Datu Pagbuaya, satellite imagery revealed the presence of additional ships not visible on AIS.

Floating Structures and Research Activities

Beijing’s redoubling of its coast guard patrols has occurred alongside other more creative Chinese initiatives at Scarborough.

Since China’s declaration of a nature reserve at Scarborough Shoal last September, Beijing has installed multiple floating structures in and around the shoal.
In the latest incident, the Philippines filed a diplomatic protest against China over a 6-by-6-meter floating structure that was found inside the lagoon of the shoal on May 25.
This was the first structure of its kind to be seen in the area, which raised alarms in Manila that Beijing was possibly beginning a larger buildout at the shoal.
Chinese official sources, including the Chinese embassy in Manila, eventually stated that the platform was a “temporary research facility” collecting data on the ecosystem of the shoal.
The deployment of the platform coincided with the end of a research expedition by a Chinese survey vessel, the Xiang Yang Hong 33, which spent several days at Scarborough in late May after conducting operations at multiple reefs in the Spratly Islands in the preceding weeks.

That platform was eventually removed on June 17, but other floating objects recently installed by China remain at the shoal. 

This includes two buoys installed last October, and several new objects identified by the PCG in May.

Pushing New Boundaries

China’s activities at Scarborough have entered uncharted territory.
The level of concerted CCG presence at the shoal in 2026 is beyond any previously observed CCG activity in the South China Sea since AMTI began regular AIS tracking in 2019.
And as Beijing doubles down on these familiar tactics, it is also employing new methods to enhance its physical presence and establish new patterns of (nominally) civilian activity at the shoal—all without crossing the traditional red lines of building a permanent structure or conducting land reclamation.
As Beijing pushes the boundaries of just how much control it can assert over the shoal, Manila and Washington would do well to keep a close eye on Scarborough.

 

Links :

• The Manila Times : CCG shoal presence highest this year
• Daily Tribune : CCG presence at Scarborough Shoal nearly matches 2025 total in first half of 2026
• MSN : CCG shoal presence highest this year 
  
  

Two centuries on, experts unlock secrets of Red Sea and Gulf of Aden sailing chart

The Indian, Kachchhi/Gujarati, document has been part of the Royal Geographical Society’s collection for 189 years

From Exeter 

 

 Experts have unlocked secrets hidden for two hundred years in a beautiful navigational chart made for 18th century seafarers negotiating the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

The paper scroll is evidence seafaring communities in the region used their own effective system of navigation that enabled trade and exchange between India, Arabia and the Horn of Africa in the age of sail, before the uptake of a more abstract, instrument-based navigation.  

The Indian, Kachchhi/Gujarati, document has been part of the Royal Geographical Society’s collection for 189 years and is one of the most detailed surviving indigenous navigational charts produced in the Indian Ocean tradition.  

New research shows it was an effective aide memoire, capturing and reflecting the intimate knowledge of sailors from modern Gujarat in India. It is a window onto the indigenous navigational practices of people across the western Indian Ocean.

Researchers have been able to identify and interpret place-names and astronomical data inscribed on the chart for the first time, establishing latitude and providing sailing directions and showing intimate local knowledge: the chart was not simply designed to facilitate long-distance transit to first-order Red Sea ports.

The chart, which is adorned with beautiful images of ships and religious buildings, dates from the late 18th or early 19th centuries.
It was acquired by Alexander Burnesin 1835 from an un-named sea captain in Kachch.
He donated it to the Royal Geographical Society.
However, he and subsequent scholars were not able to translate and analyze the map to extent that the current study has.

The 66 or so Devanagari place names on the chart have never been fully transcribed and identified and most European scholars who appraised the chart wrongly claimed that it had no latitude or longitude information.
They also thought the fact it did not show the ‘real’ angle of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden as a shortcoming when in fact it makes the chart more portable.

Experts have produced a projection of the chart that presents the information it contains spatially in a way familiar from modern maps.

The cartographer who made the document depicts more than 180 islands, plus reefs and other features such as landmarks, religious buildings and flags.

Alexander Burnes, who lived from 1805 to 1841, acquired the chart while lieutenant in the East India Company Service and assistant to the British Resident in Kachchh.
Burnes had already won celebrity through his 1832 imperial expedition across Central Asia, which had resulted in a best-selling book,honours from London learned societies including the RGS and an audience with King William IV.

He declared it would “form a specimen of naval surveying … unequalled in any of the cabinets of Europe” and believed it had been a working document used on board ship.
But he didn’t realise it was a practical navigational chart.

The chart has been interpreted previously in 1947, 1987, 2002,2012 and 2022, but scholars have overlooked the chart’s navigational affordances.
Around half of the chart’s Devanagari toponyms were left unidentified and without locations—with more still lacking precision.

Researchers believe they have now found coordinates for all 66 toponyms and improved transcriptions of the Devanagari script. 

 

They have found that chart’s 29 rhumb lines serve three main purposes: establishing the principal trend of a coastline; indicating a direction of travel across open water; and, in possibly two cases, showing safe passage into and out of port.

Professor John Cooper, from the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, who led the research, said: “Today we are used to maps and charts that project space mathematically and to scale, making regions of the world visually familiar and accessible to us in a very particular way.
Although this chart doesn’t look accurate to our way of thinking, it allowed seafarers with the necessary experience and knowledge of stellar navigation to negotiate some of the harshest and most challenging waters in the world.
All the required information was packed into a very portable scroll just 25cm wide.

“This is a rich and effective navigational reference work: its stellar information allowed sailors to know their latitude and set sailing directions; its many place names and topographical information enabled them to locate themselves precisely; its religious buildings suggest the navigator’s Muslim faith; and its flags suggesting nodes of political and fiscal action.

“It was designed for those with specific local navigational knowledge.
Although rich, the inscribed information would not be enough to enable people uninitiated in regional seafaring traditions to navigate safely. But, for those who knew, it functioned as a handy reference at sea, fulfilling a mnemonic role. Its scroll format allowed it to be opened partially, showing only the relevant section, with the rest rolled away. It stored and handled easily on-board ship.”  

Dr Katherine Parker, the Royal Geographical Society’s Cartographic Collections Manager, said: “Re-examining our Collections is an ongoing process that allows researchers to apply new methods, technologies and perspectives, uncovering the meanings and utility that these remarkable artefacts held for the people who created them centuries ago.
We have been delighted to work alongside the team to bring a greater understanding of the navigational, geographical and cultural value of this chart, as well as the cartographic skill and knowledge of its creators, into focus.”

 

Links :

• LaBrujaLaverde : Secrets Uncovered in an 18th-Century Nautical Map Guiding Sailors Between India and the Horn of Africa
• Phys : Two centuries on, experts unlock secrets of Red Sea and Gulf of Aden sailing chart 

Forget Hormuz. The shadow fleet is the next maritime crisis

The oil tanker "Grinch", suspected of belonging to the Russian's shadow fleet, is seen outside the coast of Martigues near the port of Marseille-Fos on January 25, 2026, as it's surveilled by the French Navy.
France on January 25, 2026 took into custody the Indian captain of an oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia's sanctions-busting "shadow fleet" for the vessel failing to fly a flag, prosecutors said.

The 58-year-old captain was in charge of the tanker, the Grinch, which was seized by the French navy in the Mediterranean on January 22, 2026 and is now moored, under guard, at a southern French port near Marseille.
(Photo by Thibaud Moritz / AFP via Getty Images) 

From Forbes By Jill Goldenziel,

An illicit "shadow fleet," often linked to Russia and China, is actively sabotaging critical subsea cables and evading sanctions, imperiling global data and commerce.
These vessels exploit outdated international laws and enforcement gaps, employing tactics like AIS blackouts and false flags for plausible deniability.
Recent incidents in the Baltic Sea and near Taiwan highlight the escalating threat.
Law-abiding nations must establish shared legal frameworks, including boarding stateless vessels and implementing domestic safety zones.
A crucial step involves cutting insurance for these vessels, as most reinsurance relies on US and European markets, effectively denying them market access.
Protecting 99% of international data demands urgent, coordinated action and political will.

The Strait of Hormuz reopened for a fleeting moment.
Meanwhile, a longer-term threat to maritime commerce is escalating.
The shadow fleet, aging tankers and cargo ships that break US sanctions and sabotage subsea cables with impunity, are increasingly disrupting global trade and data flows.
Russia and China use these vessels to cut cables with plausible deniability, exploiting gaps in international law that hamstring the US and its allies.
Law-abiding states must agree on legal and technical frameworks to stop the shadow fleet and protect subsea cables and cross-border data flows.

What is the Shadow Fleet?

The shadow fleet comprises old, opaquely owned, often falsely-flagged tankers that evade sanctions and engage in illicit activity.
Their operational hallmarks include automatic identification system blackouts, false position broadcasting, ship-to-ship transfers of goods, flags of convenience, and frequent reflagging and renaming.
China also uses similar tactics with fishing vessels in state-owned fleets.
Shadow fleet vessels have been involved in or suspected of several recent subsea cable-cutting incidents in the Baltic Sea and near Taiwan.
In October 2023, the Newnew Polar Bear a Hong Kong-registered and Chinese-owned ship, dragged its anchor over 100 nautical miles and damaged the Balticconnector pipeline and cables before a port call in Russia; China claimed the incident was due to a storm accident.
In November 2024, the China-flagged bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 dragged its anchor and severed two Baltic Sea cables.
Its Russian captain allegedly acted on Russian intelligence and a Russian corvette ran reconnaissance.
In early 2025, the Belize-flagged, Russian-operated Vasili Shukshinloitered approximately four weeks near Taiwan.
Contemporaneously, the Cameroon-flagged, Chinese-crewed Shunxin-39 severed a cable off Taiwan.
Shunxin-39 had used as many as six AIS identities and two names.
Recently, France has seized at least five Russian shadow fleet vessels, but efforts to prosecute have been hindered by legal gaps.

How Russia and China Are Exploiting Gaps In International Law Using the Shadow Fleet

The case of the Eagle S illustrates how gaps in international law are stopping NATO allies from countering the shadow fleet.
On Christmas Day 2024, this Cook Island-flagged ship linked to Russia’s shadow fleet cut an electricity cable connecting Finland and Estonia and damaged four data cables in Finland’s EEZ.
Estonia did not investigate or board, interpreting the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to mean that a ship in international waters is excluded from investigation.
Finland invited the vessel into its territorial sea and boarded it.
A Finnish court later held that the boarding was improper because the cable cutting occurred outside Finland’s territorial waters.

The case is on appeal.

Russia and China are using lawfare—strategically and intentionally exploiting gaps in international law—to thwart law-abiding states’ attempts to stop the shadow fleet.
The core problem is a gap between where violations occur and where enforcement authority sits, which leaves victim states and cable owners with few tools to investigate or prosecute.
The international convention dealing with protection of submarine cables dates to 1884—well before the dawn of the Internet.
UNCLOS grants law enforcement jurisdiction to states to protect submarine cables only within their territorial waters.
Otherwise, authority to prosecute cutting of subsea cables lies with the vessel’s flag state.
Many states sell “flags of convenience” for ships to fly but lack the intention or capacity to prosecute crimes upon them.
To evade arrest, shadow fleet vessels use tactics like disabling their AIS after crossing cable sites and anchoring in international waters to prevent boarding.
Some use warship escorts.
UN mechanisms are structurally incapable of addressing the cable cutting threat because of Russia and China’s roles on the Security Council.
The legal framework surrounding subsea cables is also complicated by the private sector’s role.
Content providers and hyperscalers like Google and Meta own approximately 60 of the world’s major subsea cables, and the law is murky on their liability for damage and their state’s responsibilities to protect them from damage by adversary actors.

How Law-Abiding States Can Counter the Shadow Fleet

Law-abiding states should build shared legal frameworks to respond faster to shadow fleet provocations.
A first step would be to come to a shared understanding of international law involving boarding regimes.
If a state is manipulating its AIS or switching names or flags, that provides reasonable grounds to suspect the vessel is without nationality.
Under Article 110 of UNCLOS, stateless vessels belong to no nation, so any state’s warship may exercise the right of visit and board the vessel to check its papers.
The warship’s state must then make a final determination that the boarded vessel is stateless by verifying its flag with its claimed flag state.
If the vessel is found to be stateless, it may be subject to seizure, enabling lawful disposition of cargo to legitimate buyers.

To grant coast guards immediate law enforcement authority within exclusive economic zones, Denmark, Australia, and New Zealand have adopted cable safety zone legislation.
UNCLOS articles 56 and 60 permits such legislation only if it is narrowly tailored to protect a state’s sovereign rights in its EEZ and does not restrict freedom of navigation.
While safety-zone laws must be passed domestically by individual states, law-abiding nations should coordinate to avoid fragmentation of legal regimes and gaps in authority.
Some analysts fear that cable safety zone legislation would create risk that China could launch reciprocal measures against European-flagged ships in the South China Sea.
However, China already claims law enforcement jurisdiction over almost the entirety of the sea, so additional risk is unlikely. 

Practically, states can adopt cooperation measures to curb the shadow fleet.
US Treasury Department’s January 2025 sanctions designation of 183 oil tankers, combined with UK and EU actions, reduced Baltic-terminal shadow fleet loadings drastically by March 2025, although Russia subsequently adapted.
States can also counter flag-of-convenience laundering by using financial intelligence to trace flag payments, reveal risks to insurers and financiers, and push rapid-deflagging for AIS-manipulating ships.
Diplomatically, states can push flag states to create online, verifiable flag registries.
The Guiding Principles for Underwater Infrastructure Defence Exchanges, a 17-nation initiative announced on the sidelines of the recent Shangri-La Dialogue, provides a framework to collaborate and secure cables.

How States Can Work With the Private Sector to Counter the Shadow Fleet

States can work more closely with the private sector to track and counter the shadow fleet.
Cable operators and cloud giants already detect anomalies in their infrastructure.
Together, the public and private sectors can build the architecture to move that intelligence to those with the authority to act.
States and the private sector could pool satellite imagery and maritime domain awareness data that tracks shadow fleet behavior.
They could quantify violations and losses and create a public vessel database to empower the private sector and even individuals to name and shame shadow fleet vessels and the states behind them.
A mechanism can be created to place cleared security officers at every major cable consortium, a common suspicious-activity threshold, and a direct real-time feed into NATO’s operations Baltic Sentry and Nordic Warden which are designed to protect subsea cables.

Perhaps the strongest lawfare move for the US and its allies is to cut insurance to the shadow fleet.
Most Russian shadow fleet insurance runs through European markets.
Most of the world’s reinsurance touches either the US or Europe.
States can press the international group of P&I clubs for a unified, real-time blacklist of vessels with AIS-manipulation history or other legal violations, fed by NATO’s operations Baltic Sentry and Nordic Warden.
Cutting insurance coverage would sever market access for the shadow fleet.
The market will enforce what the law cannot.

Subsea cables carry 99% of international data, including Internet, financial transactions, and military communications.
China and Russia have been using the shadow fleet to exploit gaps in international law and sabotage that infrastructure.
Closing those gaps requires a shared understanding of what international law permits and the institutional courage to build accountability mechanisms that work.
Nothing less than the safety of global commerce is at stake.

The Pacific Ocean is running a fever. Why that’s an ominous sign.

 

A massive marine heat wave covers the Pacific Ocean.
It could contribute to severe storms and extreme heat across the United States this year.
(Ben Noll/The Washington Post; NOAA/Coral Reef Watch)-

 

From WashingtonPost by Ben Noll

A marine heat wave covering an area eight times the size of the United States could soon fuel serious storms and extreme heat.

 

Across the Pacific Ocean, there’s a massive marine heat wave covering an area more than eight times the size of the contiguous United States — and it could have profound ripple effects for weather events around the globe in the coming weeks and months.

This area makes up about 13.5 percent of Earth’s total surface, stretching from the Philippines to Peru — where people are flocking to the beach during the Southern Hemisphere winter — and northward to the coasts of Hawaii and California.

Marine heat waves are a strong, sprawling and sustained warming in the ocean, sometimes near the surface and other times extending deep.
They are ranked on a scale from 1 (moderate) to 5 (beyond extreme), reflecting both their intensity and duration.

The enormous Pacific marine heat wave formed as two separate marine heat waves combined: one in the North Pacific and another associated with a developing super El Niño along the equator.
While warmer seas might sound nice to some beachgoers, what happens in the ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean — and this marine heat wave is an ominous sign for weather patterns to come.
“Months and months of warmth could mean stark impacts this winter and next spring,” said climate scientist Dillon Amaya, who has been closely monitoring the warmth near California.

How this ocean fever could affect the weather

 
Two significant weather events in the next two weeks are connected to this marine heat wave: a super typhoon in the western Pacific Ocean and the potential for a profound heat dome in the western United States during mid-July.

The typhoon, named Bavi, will be powered by the bathtub-like warmth of the western Pacific.
This dangerous storm will pass near the Northern Mariana Islands, north of Guam, on Monday local time and could also bring destructive impacts to Taiwan and China late in the week.
Meanwhile, thunderstorms bubbling over the marine heat wave could promote the formation of a powerful heat dome thousands of miles away in the western U.S.
during mid-July, sending temperatures soaring there.

Defense Department meteorologist Eric Webb said in an X post that this pattern could “greatly increase heat/wildfire risks north of New Mexico and Arizona.” That’s an area where wildfires have recently been raging.
But there may be much more extreme weather after that.
In a recent live stream, climate scientist Daniel Swain said the very warm Pacific seas are expected to drive sea levels 6 inches to 2 feet higher near California.

Winds from storms this fall and winter will elevate the sea even more, potentially resulting in dangerous rises of 2 to 3 feet or more near the California coast.
“This is the time for local governments, for county governments and for the state government to start to prepare for a significant likelihood of much higher than average sea levels, more disruptive coastal flooding and potentially record-breaking coastal water levels during winter storm events and king tide events,” Swain said.
“This coming winter, right now, does look like one where there’s an increased likelihood of historically unusual to unprecedented rain and storm events,” Swain said.

But he stressed that while the odds for such scenarios are higher, they are not guaranteed.

 

An intensifying El Niño and marine heat wave in the Pacific Ocean could fuel serious storm events in the United States this year.
(Video: Ben Noll; ECMWF)

 

California isn’t the only place that could experience such profound effects.
The vast amount of heat stretching across the Pacific will be released into the atmosphere above, turbocharging the subtropical jet stream from fall into winter.
That may form a storm highway across the southern and eastern United States, elevating the potential for flooding rainfall and severe thunderstorms.

This ocean fever will have global consequences, too.
As sea temperatures rise, evaporation increases, adding more water vapor to the atmosphere — which is fuel for extreme rain events.
“Water vapor amounts go hand in hand with sea surface temperatures, mostly,” said climate scientist Kevin Trenberth.

That extra moisture is carried by winds that circulate around high- and low-pressure cells and can be carried thousands of miles from where it originated.
Following a deadly June heat dome, a marine heat wave also recently formed near Europe, including across the Mediterranean Sea.
More extreme heat will affect that region into mid-July, with the unusually warm waters helping to reinforce the heat.

The area covered by marine heat waves is surging

Marine heat waves form in different ways.
Sometimes, winds weaken and the sea turns calmer, preventing colder water from being churned up to the surface from below.
Other times, changes in atmospheric circulation patterns cause more sunshine and fewer clouds, heating up the sea.
Changing ocean currents can play a role, too.

The one currently in the Pacific is linked to a natural climate variation called the Pacific Meridional Mode, or PMM, that formed because of weaker winds and less evaporation.

Amaya said that as El Niño continues to grow, it can combine with the PMM to generate massive swaths of heat.
These warm ocean blobs are growing in both coverage and intensity as the climate changes.
“The heat capacity and mobility of water makes the ocean the main sink of excess heat from human-induced heating of the planet, mainly from increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Trenberth said.

How the coverage and intensity of marine heat waves have changed

The portion of the global ocean experiencing marine heat waves has more than tripled since the late 1980s, increasing from about 9 percent to more than 30 percent.
Over that same period, the global coverage of strong to beyond extreme (Category 2 to Category 5) marine heat waves has increased nearly sixfold.


Marine heat waves also spike during El Niño events.
In January 2024, during an El Niño event that contributed to the planet’s warmest year on record, more than 46 percent of the global oceans simultaneously experienced a marine heat wave — the highest amount on record.
Currently, more than 37 percent of the global ocean is covered by a marine heat wave, but a record may be set this year or next as this ocean fever — and its potential impact — intensifies.

Goblin shark caught on camera for the first time ever

Scientists have captured the first-ever footage of a goblin shark swimming deep beneath the ocean's surface, providing an unprecedented look at one of Earth's most mysterious predators.

Goblin sharks are rarely seen alive, making this discovery a major breakthrough for marine researchers.

Their unusual appearance and extendable jaws have fascinated scientists for decades, and this footage reveals how these ancient sharks move through the darkness of the deep sea.

One of the ocean's most mysterious sharks caught on camera in world-first: 

One of the ocean's most elusive creatures, described by scientists as "the ugliest shark on the planet", has been filmed alive in its deep-sea habitat for the first time.
The footage captures goblin sharks swimming at depths previously unknown for the species, extending the species’ known range into the Central Pacific, and revealing just how little scientists still know about the deep sea.