Eyes in the sky protect Pacific
Kiwi start-up can detect all manner of suspicious behaviour at sea, from loitering, to ‘‘dark vessels’’ that turn off their transponders. Geraden Cann reports.
A Kiwi start-up is helping monitor the Pacific Ocean for signs of human and drug smuggling, illegal fishing, and clandestine meetings at sea.
Most New Zealanders will never have heard of Xerra, but it has 26 employees working remotely across the country, and an unobtrusive office in Alexandra usually manned by a couple of staff members.
The company’s product, Starboard Maritime Intelligence, uses satellite data to identify suspicious behaviour of vessels at sea, catalogues it, and flags it automatically with enforcement agencies.
If a vessel appears to be meeting with another, a red flag signals it to analysts. If it appears to be fishing, it is given a pink flag, any missing movement data from a turned-off transponder is signalled with a dotted line, and any loitering ship is flagged in grey.
Xerra head of product and design Andy Hovey said these insights dramatically cut the time taken by agencies to spot suspicious behaviour.
Established in 2017 with funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Xerra now counts the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), New Zealand Customs, the Australian
Fisheries Management Authority, and Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency among its customers.
Hovey said Starboard undoubtedly created some exciting work stories, but its users had to keep them quiet.
’’It’s one of these things where we would like to tell you these really exciting stories of crazy things happening on the high seas, but for obvious reasons most of the things that our customers are doing, like Customs or MPI in the fisheries space, it kind of stays within that realm of information,’’ he said.
’’They don’t want to publish necessarily the way things are done.’’
Hovey said even if a ship turned off its automatic information system transponder it could still be tracked via the radio frequencies of its navigational radar.
Another method of detection used satellites that could beam energy towards Earth, and tell if a ship was in the area by how the energy was reflected back up to the satellite.
Hovey said discussions were under way with Maritime New Zealand to see how its tech could be used in its Rescue Coordination Centre.
‘‘Where it gets used in search and rescue is identifying where
the last message was last sent from a vessel, then they look at the vessels in the area and work out who is closest, and whether they can send a vessel to the event,’’ Hovey said.
Starboard could also flag ships coming from foreign ports that might be carrying invasive pests, even if those ships left the information off their documents.
‘‘It looks at whether a vessel has been in risk areas during risk periods, and possibly picked up a gypsy moth or brown marmorated stink bugs – those are the two bugs we flag at the moment.’’
Any ship identified as high risk will get a closer inspection from MPI.
‘‘There have been several
instances were a port visit hasn’t been reported, either intentionally or through mistake.’’
The system could also detect ships entering into marine protected areas.
Hovey said the company had been focusing on the Pacific Ocean, but hoped to expand world-wide.