{"id":850,"date":"2026-09-28T11:33:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T11:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/pcg-says-jia-hai-ke-7-spoofed-ais-while-holding-near-a-luzon-strait-cable-corridor\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T11:33:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T11:33:18","slug":"pcg-says-jia-hai-ke-7-spoofed-ais-while-holding-near-a-luzon-strait-cable-corridor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/pcg-says-jia-hai-ke-7-spoofed-ais-while-holding-near-a-luzon-strait-cable-corridor\/","title":{"rendered":"PCG says Jia Hai Ke 7 spoofed AIS while holding near a Luzon Strait cable corridor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Philippine Coast Guard said on Monday, 28 September, that the Chinese-flagged research vessel Jia Hai Ke 7 was holding position about 37.84 nautical miles northwest of Itbayat, Batanes, inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone, and that it was transmitting false Automatic Identification System positions. Rear Adm. Jay Tarriela, the PCG spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, said a Maritime Domain Awareness flight ordered by Commandant Adm. Ronnie Gil Gavan visually confirmed the hull about 38 nautical miles off Itbayat. Aircraft challenged the ship multiple times by radio, asserting Philippine sovereign rights and demanding that it state its intentions and cease any unauthorized activity. The vessel did not respond. That PCG statement, carried by the Philippine News Agency at 16:32 Philippine time and by Reuters in Manila, is the primary for this note. It is not a rewrite of Hormuz AIS-off traffic, of the Vivit Africa LNG cargo-system incident, or of the UN Security Council Red Sea file already on this blog.<\/p>\n

PCG said Jia Hai Ke 7 was detected by the monitoring station at Itbayat, not by the ship\u2019s own AIS broadcast. Verification through the Canada-provided Dark Vessel Detection system showed a physically impossible trail. The vessel reported departing Xiamen, Fujian, at 12:59 a.m. on 21 September, then broadcasting from off Bindari, Papua New Guinea \u2014 more than 2,000 nautical miles away \u2014 by 8:10 p.m. the same day. By 6:55 a.m. on Monday it was transmitting from northwest of Itbayat. \u201cThe PCG assesses this as deliberate AIS spoofing to conceal the vessel\u2019s true movements from Philippine authorities,\u201d Tarriela said, adding that the presence would have gone undetected without the Itbayat station. Reuters reported that the Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Do not recast the file as a confirmed cable cut, a boarding, a naval clash, or a reason to treat every Chinese-flag research hull as a SOLAS casualty.<\/p>\n

Holding station over a cable corridor is not innocent passage<\/h2>\n

Tarriela said the ship\u2019s pattern \u2014 holding position rather than steaming on a steady course and speed \u2014 was not consistent with innocent passage. It matched the behaviour of a vessel conducting marine scientific research. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, marine scientific research in an exclusive economic zone requires the consent of the coastal state. Innocent passage is a territorial-sea concept and, even there, it requires continuous and expeditious transit. A survey ship that goes dark on AIS, ignores radio challenges and sits on a point in the EEZ is not a passing merchantman. PCG said it will continue tracking through monitoring stations, the Dark Vessel Detection system and follow-on flights, and that it will take measures under Philippine law and UNCLOS to challenge and drive away vessels conducting unauthorized activities in Philippine maritime zones. The deployment, PNA recorded, is in line with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.\u2019s directive not to tolerate unauthorized foreign research in Philippine waters.<\/p>\n

Open sources cited by PCG describe Jia Hai Ke 7 as a 2,000-ton, 70-metre vessel built for Zhuhai Jiahai Marine Technology Co. and placed in service in April 2025. It is described as China\u2019s first privately owned research ship fitted with a DP-2 dynamic positioning system and quiet electric propulsion, designed to hold station over a fixed point on the seabed for marine geological survey. PCG said it has operated alongside seabed-drilling ships. Those are the capabilities that matter on a cable corridor. DP-2 station-keeping and a quiet plant are what a geological or cable-route survey needs. They are not what a ship in innocent passage needs. Reuters noted that Itbayat lies about 160 kilometres from Taiwan. The waters off Batanes and the Luzon Strait host submarine-cable corridors linking the Philippines to Northeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific. \u201cA seabed-survey vessel hiding its position while holding station in this corridor raises serious concern over the security of the country\u2019s undersea communications infrastructure and the potential military use of the data collected,\u201d Tarriela said.<\/p>\n

SOLAS requires ships fitted with AIS to maintain it in operation and to transmit accurate information. Flag-state and coastal-state practice treats spoofed positions as a safety and security failure, not as a privacy setting. A merchant Master who sees Jia Hai Ke 7, or a hull broadcasting from a position that cannot match the radar return, should treat the AIS picture as contaminated. The same logic applies in reverse: a ship that relies on public AIS overlays for collision avoidance or for proving where it was during a cable-damage investigation is using a feed that can be forged. PCG\u2019s point is that the Itbayat shore station and the Dark Vessel Detection layer caught what the public AIS layer missed. Operators who only watch a web tracker will not see that gap until a coastal state publishes it.<\/p>\n

The operational file is AIS integrity, consent and cable awareness<\/h2>\n

The incident sits in a different basin from the Strait of Hormuz, where AIS-off has become a wartime routing tactic and JMIC still rates the threat as severe. It also sits apart from the Vivit Africa LNG case, which was a suspected cargo-system cyber incident on a laden gas carrier in the Mediterranean, not a survey ship spoofing its identity near cables. The common operator thread is that the electronic picture cannot be taken as the physical picture. In Hormuz, turning AIS off is often a deliberate risk-reduction choice against targeting. Off Batanes, a research hull appears to have left AIS on while feeding it a false track. The safety obligation on other ships does not change: radar, visual, VHF and, where fitted, long-range identification remain the collision-avoidance stack. AIS is an aid. It is not a position of record when a coastal authority has just shown that the aid was lying by more than 2,000 nautical miles in a single day.<\/p>\n

Cable-corridor awareness belongs in passage planning for the Luzon Strait, Bashi Channel and the approaches to Batanes, not only in a security circular after the fact. A merchant ship, cable-repair vessel or survey contractor working or transiting that corridor should assume that unauthorized station-keeping by a DP-capable hull is a live coastal-state enforcement issue. Give a wide berth to a ship holding with gear over the side. Do not close to \u201chave a look.\u201d Do not treat a non-responding survey vessel as a failed DSC test; PCG already called it on VHF from the air and got silence. If your own voyage requires marine scientific research, cable inspection or seabed work in a foreign EEZ, the Monday file is a reminder that coastal-state consent is the gate, not a courtesy. A privately owned research ship with DP-2 is still a research ship for UNCLOS purposes. Ownership structure does not convert survey into passage.<\/p>\n

Companies that sell or consume AIS-derived analytics \u2014 arrival estimates, sanctions screening, war-risk questionnaires, \u201cdark fleet\u201d dashboards \u2014 should record that a 70-metre survey vessel was able to broadcast a Papua New Guinea position while physically off the Philippine EEZ. That is not an argument for discarding AIS. It is an argument for secondary sources: coastal VTS, satellite SAR or RF where contracted, own-ship sensors, and coastal-state notices. For Masters, the practical bridge action is simpler. If AIS and radar disagree, radar and visual win. If a research vessel is holding near a charted cable, increase CPA, log the observation, and report through the company and, where the coastal state has a reporting scheme, to that scheme. PCG has said it will keep flying. That does not mean a merchant ship should become an additional patrol asset.<\/p>\n

What Operators Should Note<\/h2>\n