A local master mariner calls the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz and the resultant impact on global markets, “a wake-up call,” and an example of how fundamentals remain important when technology fails.

Captain Kris Drodge, an instructor at the Marine Institute, says mariners rely on charts to navigate and when those signals are jammed, the effects can be profound, as has been seen in one of the world’s busiest shipping channels.

“It’s easy to forget how easy things can go sideways, when the signal is jammed, or spoofed, which is happening in the Gulf. So you’re getting almost a cyber security attack on the local shipping environment in the Strait. So all of a sudden you’ve got ships jumping around the screen, you know, they show up on land, they show up at airports, so it’s an absurd categorization of that navigation. It’s untrustworthy.”

He says navigators are getting around the technological challenges by reverting to old-fashioned paper charts.

“It’s your ultimate backup,” says Drodge, and the same is true wherever you sail. “We have a lot of integral trade routes within this country that could come under these same type of threats from state agents around our coast, around the Arctic. So, what it really shows is that we’ve built something incredibly slick, we’ve got integrated bridges now, but they’re only as honest as the data that comes in. So, when all that is compromised, the whole system is untrustworthy. It’s very rewarding when we have mariners who are still trained in the old-fashioned tools.”