For those of us deeply involved in monitoring live animal transport; my No.1 hate, the term ‘AIS’ will be a common one. For those of you who are more unfamiliar, I will attempt to explain more. AIS has been an invaluable tool to us for decades. A global shipping system which provides details of livestock transporting ships; or any other type of vessel, their current locations in the World, and the ETA of where the vessel is due to arrive next at any global port.
For those of us involved in UK undercover, we could for example, watch the ship loading at Dover; return home and then by using AIS on the computer, track its movements to a destination port in Europe. If you had a monitoring crew on standby at the overseas port, you could keep in touch by phone and let them know exactly when the vessel had docked. Thus, they could get into position read to track the transporters by road once they had disembarked the port.
If transporter ships were stranded in the Red Sea for example, their situation using AIS could be monitored in real time – a ‘godsend’ system in every sense.
My first encounter with this abusive business happened by chance when I was a young lad. I am into my early sixties and still fighting the abuse. My encounter all those decades ago made me know it was wrong; nothing has changed.
https://support.marinetraffic.com/en/articles/9552654-live-map
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system#Deployment_history
https://www.nautinst.org/resources-page/how-ais-works-and-what-it-does.html
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/news/spiridon-ii-live-export-disaster/
The AWF which is trying to track the Spiridon, has said the ship keeps turning off its signal -effectively going dark for a few days. Illegal – yes probably. A resultant danger to other shipping – FOR SURE.
World Animals Voice 