Unexplained Ship Clusters Anchoring off Taiwan

TaiwanPlus TV’s investigative journalist Cadence Quantara has filed a report on an unexplained cluster of shipping which is lingering a short distance off the southwest coast of Taiwan, adjacent to the cities of Tainan and Kaohsiung. On average there are 75 ships maintaining position in the area, with a familiar list of vessels arriving, lingering, departing and then returning, but with the overall number of ships in the cluster remaining roughly constant.

Further out to sea, a smaller number of ships are also gathered, and separately off Taiwan’s northern tip there is another anchorage area within Internal Waters where ships also tend to gather. These concentrations of ships have become more pronounced since March.

The Taiwanese authorities, and the Coast Guard Administration in particular, are perplexed at to what is the common purpose of these groups of ships, and are speculating why this pattern of behaviour has emerged in the last six months. Most of the ships are either cargo vessels or oil/chemical products tankers, and are on the elderly side; of the 75 ships regularly seen in the area, 65 fall into the pan-Asian Tokyo MOU’s High Risk category because of their age and degraded seaworthiness.

This story was originally published by The Maritime Executive. Read the full story at The Maritime Executive →