Seán Fitzgerald’s love of ships and the sea has seen him develop ground breaking software that can identify suspicious vessels.

His maritime surveillance platform tracks vessels at sea using AIS (Automatic Identification System), known as the Fleet Monitor, which could be a game changer in locating shadow fleets.

It's good going for the 16-year-old TY student from Courtmacsherry who attends St Brogan’s College in Bandon.

He was recently named the Senior Category winner at the Regional Final of the Cork North and West Student Enterprise Awards and is being tipped for a national student innovation award for the project.

His win earned the school €1,500 while he secured a further €500 in travel expenses and goes on to represent West Cork at the national finals of the Student Enterprise Programme.

Speaking to The Southern Star, Seán said he came up with the idea one evening when he read an article about the shadow fleet operating near Ireland.

‘I was wondering if I could find any of these vessels. I was shocked when I looked on my ship tracking app and discovered that there were eight shadow fleet vessels operating around Ireland’s EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) which were listed on NATO or EU sanctions lists. It showed how difficult it is for people to monitor this kind of activity in clear, accessible way.’ said Seán.

He searched online to see if there was any website or app that tracks the shadow fleet globally and when he discovered none existed, he decided to just see if he could build his own.

‘Commercial ships have even been used to damage undersea cables by dragging their anchors across them as part of hybrid sea tactics,’ he said. 

‘Fleet Monitor will automatically detect suspicious behaviour near that kind of critical infrastructure and an early-warning systems like this could potentially save countries and companies hundreds of millions of euros in damage and it could prevent accidental damage.’

Seán receiving his award for first place in the regional young enterprise.

Sean said that Fleet Monitor is being developed to use AI and custom algorithms to estimate a vessel’s likely location.

‘This means that intelligence agencies can know that a vessel is expected to enter the territorial waters of EEZ well before it comes near them, even if the ship has turned off its tracker.’

It wasn’t all plain sailing for Seán at the beginning and he spent the first 50 or 60 hours fixing errors and troubleshooting.

‘I even spent two hours tracking down a single stray letter I’d accidentally typed into the code,’ he admitted. ‘But once things started working I began to build confidence. The biggest lesson was how much time and effort it actually takes to build software properly. Even small features involve a lot of debugging.’

Seán’s platform cross-references live vessel positions in real time against EU and NATO sanctions lists to identify known or suspected shadow fleet ships operating anywhere in the world.

A further innovation is his integration of detailed geographic layers mapping the world’s undersea fibre optic cables, gas pipelines, power interconnectors and other critical subsea infrastructure.

Alongside its security and defence applications, Fleet Monitor is designed to be accessible and helpful for many water users.

‘Journalists, NGOs, researchers and members of the public can use it to monitor and document shadow fleet activity without specialist training,’ explained Seán. 

‘Broader civilian uses include fisheries protection monitoring, port and marina approach alerts and even sailing race tracking. People can even just get an alert when a ship passes their stretch of coast so they can simply watch it go by.’

Seán believes that entrepreneurship is constant problem-solving and prioritising.

‘Progress comes from staying disciplined and sticking at it, even when things just aren’t working. I really enjoyed working on this software and I love the challenge of building it and the problem-solving side of it to.’

As he lives by the sea Seán said he has always been fascinated by the ships passing the West Cork coast.

‘I can actually see ships passing the Old Head of Kinsale from my bedroom window and I like to find out where they are heading to,’ he added.

He also recently did his TY work experience at the National Maritime College in Ringaskiddy which has only fuelled his interest in shipping and his Fleet Monitor app.

‘I found it really interesting there. I love shops and the sea so it was perfect for me.’

Seán has in fact submitted a patent application for the parts of the software which are unique and is waiting to see how that progresses.

For now, he is busy preparing his presentation for the Student Enterprise Programme National Final which will be held in the Mullingar Park Hotel on Thursday May 7th where he will be flying the flag for West Cork with his worthy project.