Christiaan Triebert

So it's a lot of ways of obscuring their real identities.

But that makes it also kind of fascinating and fun to find out, can I find out which tanker it is?

So they also change their flags.

So all these large vessels need to be registered in a country and then they're flying the flag of that country.

So they can, for instance, say like, oh, we're flying the flag of Cameroon or the Marshall Islands or Panama or Guyana.

But actually, when you go to the shipping registries of these countries, it turns out that they're at times not even registered there.

So they're flying a fake flag.

And what we've seen recently a lot is ships changing their flags to Russia.

Because they think it will protect them against the U.S.

Like boarding a vessel, like U.S.

is boarding vessels and saying, hey, you're not flying a real flag.

But boarding a ship that actually flies an official Russian flag is a whole other thing.

It could cause a major diplomatic crisis between these two superpowers.

And that's interesting because if that's what they're trying to do, claim Russian protection, it hasn't worked.

Because the United States has already boarded two vessels that are flying an official Russian flag.

So of these 16 vessels that disappeared, we found a couple that were sailing in the Caribbean Sea, but also a couple that were already far out in the Atlantic Ocean.

So we contacted the United States and said, like, are you aware of these ships?

Are you like, are they going to be stopped?

Like, what's going on?

You contacted the military.