“Something didn’t look right to me because in nature very rarely do you see straight lines,” said Wang, chief operating officer of ingeniSPACE, which analyses satellite imagery and ship signals data.

“We’ve seen like two, 300, up to a thousand (Chinese fishing boats congregate), but anything exceeding a thousand I thought was unusual.”

Maritime and military experts told AFP the massing of Chinese fishing boats on December 25, about 300 kilometres northeast of Taiwan, was on a scale they had never seen before.

  • tyrant@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Because they have a stockpile of cheap drones that can be launched from anywhere in the country and only need to keep an eye on a choke point that is 39km (24 miles) wide. They aren’t physically blocking it but the threat of drones and now maybe mines are causing insurance companies to exclude these tankers that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Doesn’t the insurance issue affect Chinese bound ships the same as any others? I’m not yet seeing how this adds up to Iran being able to block just what they want and allow through just what they want. Mines especially aren’t known for being discriminating.

      • tyrant@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I’m just some dude on the Internet man. I’m parroting what I’ve read elsewhere. You’d have to look around at more reliable sources for the answers to your questions

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Appreciate the honesty. I do read the news but then Reddit is often good for asking the inevitable follow up questions that haven’t clicked for me.