Right now, thousands of ships are crossing the ocean with their tracking switched off. Starboard Maritime Intelligence, from Wellington, exists to find them.
Dark vessels
Most ships broadcast their position. The ones up to no good, like illegal fishing, smuggling or dodging sanctions, switch the signal off and vanish. They are called dark vessels.
What Starboard does
- Crunches over a billion maritime data points a day
- Flags strange behaviour, like two boats meeting in the middle of nowhere to move fish
- Operates across 30+ countries
- Helps protect over 840,000km of undersea cables
Who uses it
Government and defence agencies. The company’s chair says the US Navy uses it to monitor North Korea sanctions. The Prime Minister personally opened its Wellington HQ.
Why it matters
By some estimates, illegal fishing alone costs the world up to US$50 billion a year.
My read
While everyone else builds another chatbot, Starboard built AI for the actual ocean. For two island nations, that is about as on-brand as it gets.