Over half of vessels in Scotland’s coastal waters are untracked, raising serious concerns for vessel safety, marine traffic and environmental monitoring.

That’s according to a new study by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, which found that only 43% of vessels within 10km of the Scottish coast broadcast an Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal, the global standard for vessel monitoring.

This means the majority of marine activity in these waters is effectively invisible to standard tracking tools.