Starboard Maritime Intelligence

Starboard Maritime Intelligence is a commercial maritime-domain-awareness firm whose Automatic Identification System (AIS) vessel-tracking became one of the sharpest tools reading Russia's fuel war in July 2026. Its data recorded a possible 55% drop in vessel crossings of the Sea of Azov between 30 June and 11 July, as Ukraine's drone campaign shifted from static refineries to the tankers moving fuel out through the sea.

Founded in 2019 and based in Wellington, New Zealand (launched publicly by the Xerra Earth Observation Institute in 2021), Starboard fuses AIS feeds from providers including exactEarth, S&P Global Market Intelligence and Spire with satellite imagery and machine learning to build a common operating picture of vessel movements, including 'dark' vessels that switch off their transponders. Its core customers are governments, border-security agencies and fisheries regulators tracking illegal fishing and biosecurity risk.

The Azov figure marks one of the first times Starboard's civilian maritime-domain data has been cited directly in open-source reporting on an active war economy, alongside CREA's oil-price tracking as an independent lens on a state's wartime energy logistics.