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A rotating selection from the paid serviceTransatlantic sanctions lists drift apart as Washington targets Iran, Europe Russia
The United States and the United Kingdom each blacklisted a batch of tankers on 8 October without naming a single ship in common, as Washington’s shadow fleet listings concentrate on Iran’s trade and Europe’s on Russia’s. The US Treasury listed 22…
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Methane slip trips up EU green-finance label for LNG-fuelled ships
The European Commission was wrong to let LNG-fuelled ships qualify as green investments without setting any limit on the methane their engines let slip,…
On film
Built from Mariel dataA “gemstone” fleet has formed under Russia’s flag: since July, Maritime Watch’s Mariel database has seen 17 sanctioned tankers in Danish and Finnish waters take the Russian flag and Russian gemstone names, from ONIKS (onyx) to BIRYUZA (turquoise). Our new short film follows one of them, SPESSARTIN, through six names and twelve flags, from her mainstream years as the Liberian-flagged JUPITER SUN to the switch to Russia this summer.
Music: Emand Edroff. Sound effects: Dragon Studio, SoundReality, Freesound Community. Via Pixabay. Maps: Natural Earth. Flags: flag-icons.
The Russian-flagged Gemstone Fleet
Seventeen sanctioned tankers took Russia’s flag and Russian gemstone names in Danish and Finnish waters between July and October. The film follows one of them, SPESSARTIN, through six names and twelve flags.
Open the film page → All films →Mariel
Mariel is our own shadow-fleet database. It follows ships, the companies behind them and the sanctions lists, ship by ship and date by date, so a single query can show what happened to a fleet before and after a listing.
A typical piece of Mariel work: an operator is sanctioned, and Mariel traces where each of its ships went next, under which new manager, at which address, and which ports they called at afterwards.
- When a ship operator is sanctioned, where do its ships go next?
- Which listed ships were still calling at European ports after the listing?
- Who managed, flagged and classed a ship before anyone listed it?
- Which companies share an office with a sanctioned one?
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Shadow-fleet reporting
Stories from Mariel on the ships, managers and listings the sanctions regimes miss.
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Latest Monitor
All past issues →Maritime Watch Monitor, 20 Oct 2026
Brussels sanctions a second tanker manager but not its ships, months after the first case let four tankers sail on. Plus: the 20 sanctioned supertankers Washington could bring back into legitimate trade, and our new Black Sea film.
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