Thousands of Chinese boats mass at sea, raising questions

AFP via MSN ^ | 13 March 2026 | AFP

[Alas Babylon!]

Thousands of Chinese fishing boats have been massing in geometric formations in the East China Sea, in coordinated actions that experts believe are part of Beijing's preparations for a potential regional crisis or conflict.

Monitoring ship-tracking data on Christmas Day, Jason Wang could tell something "unusual" was underway as fishing boats swarmed into two parallel inverted Ls,each about 400 kilometres (about 250 miles) long.

Wang could see the roughly 2,000 fishing boats among the many thousands of vessels that ply the busy waterway through their automatic identification systems (AIS) -- a GPS-type signal that commercial ships use to avoid collisions.

[Alas Babylon!]

This article covers two events; one on 25 Dec 2025 and the other on 11 Jan 2026, so this isn't part of the US action in the Middle East.

What it is is unknown. Sounds like some strange drill of their fishermen militia, if such a thing exists.

[Alas Babylon!]

Infographic with maps of the East China Sea, showing geometric formations of about 2,000 Chinese fishing boats on December 25, 2025 and about 1,000 on January 11, 2026 detected via the vessels' automatic identification systems, a GPS-type signal that commercial ships use to avoid collisions, based on data analysed by AFP © Patricio ARANA

[IrishPennant]

Was one of the boats named “Wicked Pissa”?

[thescourged1]

Interesting location.

Laying remote seafloor mines?

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

will keep Japan from sending any naval forces to help Taiwan. It’s on...

[GingisK]

Maybe a Dunkirk-style evacuation.

[The Free Engineer]

It doesn’t seem reasonable that they could pull this off with a fishing fleet with no operational leakage.

This may be some kind of hack of the ship tracking networks, Perhaps an attack on the satellites, and perhaps an attack on the Internet.

[Alas Babylon!]

Yeah. It is weird. Strange. 4000 boats in a 250-mile-long line.

[Sequoyah101]

Blocking action for submarine detection? Either for detection of vessels by submarines or to prevent detection of their own submarines?

[telescope115]

Wow. It could very well be on…

[telescope115]

I wonder what equipment those boats could possibly be carrying…

[Chgogal]

The US is busy in the Mideast so the rat is planning something devious on the other side of the world.

[MotorCityBuck]

Dwight D. Eisenhower would be impressed. LOL!

[kvanbrunt2]

Was one of the boats named “Wicked Pissa”?
I think so. see it here.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:65.4/centery:26.9/zoom:7

[moviefan8]

Trump made a mistake in moving the Marines away from Japan.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

The inscrutable chinaman.

"

[subterfuge]

MARINE TRAFFIC. See the world’s boating traffic here. Very interesting:

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=c390d0480c4d0b237c06592912d5b33ffb38c3ec46ab5ec16fe4fa5af1eff392JmltdHM9MTc3MzM2MDAwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=2e72bc51-e265-6436-1ce5-a954e3db6507&psq=MARINE+TRAFFIC+KEPLR&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubWFyaW5ldHJhZmZpYy5jb20vZW4vYWlzL2hvbWUvY2VudGVyeDotMTIuMC9jZW50ZXJ5OjI0Ljkvem9vbTo0

[The Free Engineer]

There may be just 20 boats and this is a test of spoofing the system.

[Yardstick]

Sounds ultra series. If they all jump up and down at the same time, will the world tilt on its axis?

[doc maverick]

“It’s on...”
Doesn’t surprise me.
Time to start expelling Chinese “visitors” from the US and throw Tampon Walz along in other democrat CCP operatives in concentration camps. They’ve been expecting it anyway.