AIS Dark Activity

AIS dark activity is the deliberate switching off or suppression of a vessel’s AIS transponder to hide a movement, distinct from spoofing, which transmits false data. SOLAS allows a master to disable AIS only where its operation might compromise the ship’s safety or security, so a sustained gap in a known evasion corridor is itself a red flag. Analysts pair the start and end points of a gap with satellite imagery and ship-to-ship transfer patterns to reconstruct what happened during the blackout.