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On 29 September, an operation in Somali waters freed the remaining crew of the hijacked vessel Honour 25. Five seafarers were killed during the rescue. Several others were seriously injured. The Honour 25 was one of three vessels released that week. Together with the Seamull and the Eureka, 44 seafarers came out of captivity that had run for months. Their governments are now working with the shipowners and relevant authorities on repatriation. Twenty-two seafarers remain aboa

The International Group of P&I Clubs finalized its reinsurance arrangements for the 2026/27 policy year, effective from noon on 20 February 2026. Four of the five vessel categories got a rate reduction. One did not. Fully cellular container ships went up 15 percent, to $1.0237 per gross ton. Persistent oil tankers fell 8 percent, dry cargo fell 5 percent, passenger vessels fell 8.5 percent, and clean tankers were held flat. For a container operator, that is a cost increase ar

A counterparty screens clean. The name returns no hits on the Specially Designated Nationals list, the company is registered in a jurisdiction with no sanctions program against it, and the vessel it owns has never appeared on a designation notice. None of that tells you the company is not sanctioned. Under the ownership rules applied by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, an entity can be subject to an asset freeze without ever being named, purely b

On August 21 and August 24, a specialized team of Coast Guard law enforcement officers, a vessel inspector, Coast Guard cyber protection personnel, and FBI cyber operators boarded two foreign-flagged oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico. The joint statement said the boardings were designed to ensure the integrity of each vessel's operational and information technology systems following indications that their networks had been compromised by foreign cyber actors. One of the vesse

Six months into the conflict, the marine insurance market has a number. David Osler, law and marine insurance editor at Lloyd's List, puts war risk claims arising from the fighting at roughly $2 billion across more than 70 filings. On his assessment it is exceeded, over the past decade, only by the payouts arising from the containership that brought down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in 2024. The International Maritime Organization has recorded more than 72 attack

On the afternoon of August 20, a product tanker transiting west through the Gulf of Aden broadcast a distress call on VHF Channel 16 reporting that an unauthorized vessel was approaching. Her AIS then transmitted a message reading PIRATE ONBOARD HELP. Shortly afterward she altered course toward Somalia. Six armed men had boarded the 32,200 dwt Sibu 1, IMO 9204776, roughly 136 nautical miles east of Al Mukalla, Yemen. Twenty crew were aboard. Sixteen Indians, one Syrian, one S

[Image from Wikimedia Commons, from User Unukorno, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0] On January 9, 2025, a 152,000 dwt crude tanker suffered a total blackout in the Baltic Sea. She drifted unmanned in heavy seas, lost all maneuverability, and came into German territorial waters off the island of Rügen. German authorities towed her to an anchorage off Sassnitz to prevent a spill. She is still there. The Eventin has now been at anchor off a German resort island for more than ni

An oil spill off the coast of Oman has spread across somewhere between 390 and 2,000 square kilometers, depending on whose satellite analysis you accept, and reached roughly 40 kilometers of mainland coastline near Ras Madrakah on August 12. The source is a half-sunk tanker called the Caroline Bezengi, aground in the Arabian Sea, leaking crude for approximately six weeks with no effective containment. The vessel is 81,085 gross tons. It has held no classification from an IACS

[Image: USCGC Munro (WMSL-755), the cutter that pursued the Bella 1 across the Atlantic] On August 7, 2026, a 47-year-old Georgian national named Avtandil Kalandadze was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to ten months in federal prison. He will be deported when the term is served. The coverage framed it as a shadow fleet prosecution, which it is. What the coverage mostly did not say is that Kalandadze was not convicted of a sanctions offense. H