Navigating Nautical Confusion: In Pursuit of a Common Maritime Lexicon

From “chokepoints” to “freedom of navigation,” the world’s headlines have been replete with maritime terms in recent years, and navigating that terminology has become a challenge for policymakers and maritime professionals alike, not to mention the general public. The maritime world is niche, with many archaic terms and concepts that have no terrestrial equivalent. Furthermore, it is often difficult to differentiate between terms that are colloquial versus technical. The term “shadow fleet,” for example, has graced newspapers around the world, but has no official definition and no legal significance. And while it may seem a pedantic or even trivial matter to try to clarify the terminology such that everybody is on the same page, there is an increasingly critical need to do so. As security threats, accidents at sea and climatic events disrupt maritime commerce in more frequent and significant ways, global supply chains of critical goods, including food and energy supplies, continue to break down.

The resulting economic turbulence and life-threatening situations mean that maritime policy has become more important than ever. If leaders do not first understand how to articulate maritime matters in a way that is mutually intelligible to all actors, setting clear policy and resolving these critical issues (in some cases of existential concern) become all the more difficult, if not impossible. The time for a universal maritime lexicon with clear, commonly understood definitions has arrived.

Four main challenges inhibit the ability of the maritime space to be governed in as clear a fashion as is currently necessary:

- Diversity of understanding of issues and terms within the maritime world itself

- Regional or even national variation in terminology

- Confusion between colloquial and technical terms

- The political appropriation of maritime terms to achieve non-maritime objectives

All four of these issues encumber the ability of maritime professionals to be able to recognize and respond to the panoply of threats and challenges currently facing the domain that carries 90% of world trade, 99% of telephonic and internet communication, and more than 20% of our dietary protein intake. We need the maritime domain to function, so we need to be able to talk about it with clarity and precision.

The first problem is that different terms mean different things to different maritime actors. What navies, coast guards, and marine police forces care about is very different than what the shipping industry, the offshore oil and gas industry, the fishing industry or any other aspect of the maritime sector would care about. This means that there is incredible variation and, in fact, mismatched language between different portions of the maritime world itself. When the Houthis began to attack ships in November 2023, the need for interaction between navies and shipping lines became critically important. Within minutes, however, it became evident that the two portions of the maritime world that had to be working together spoke very different languages, despite the common operating environment.

As a simple example, naval officers and political leaders kept talking about the needs of “shippers.” But shippers are the people who put goods on ships. Shipping lines or common carriers are the ones that actually bring the goods from Point A to Point B. At a time when clarity was of critical importance, that level of inexactness and disconnect was a problem as it created confusion among those who were already facing unprecedented challenges. It also eroded trust, as imprecise language in the ears of someone who recognizes the imprecision can translate into serious concerns as to the competency of that person or entity.

Then, as ships started getting hit by missiles and drones, political leaders would talk about “marine insurance” as if it was a singular phenomenon, not understanding that there may be five or more marine insurance policies on a single voyage, all of which conflict with each other. Comments about how “marine insurance” would want to avoid a vessel sinking betrayed a lack of knowledge that, while the hull and machinery policy would certainly want to avoid the loss, the protection & indemnity policy would not want to risk the lives of salvors amid a perpetual missile and drone barrage. Terminology matters, as it is what allows us to understand the same situation in the same way. When seafarers’ lives, the marine environment and the global economy are all on the line, that understanding is vital.

This is not just a phenomenon, however, that is problematic in times of unusual security crises. As in many professional environments, the maritime sector has a tendency to use acronyms in place of lengthy expressions. The acronym “SAR,” for example, is used frequently. To maritime operators at sea, it typically means “search and rescue.” To those running the technical side of a maritime operations center, however, it may instead mean “synthetic aperture radar.” Knowing that disambiguation is important to ensure that conversations – particularly at critical moments – do not lead to life threatening confusion.

Beyond the intra-maritime lexical diversity, regional and national diversity also play a part in creating challenges for establishing a consistent, and common understanding of maritime phenomena. To work on countering illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, there are a lot of terms that need to be understood. “IUU fishing,” as an acronymic term itself, has a tendency to blur the important distinctions between illegal fishing versus unreported fishing versus unregulated fishing. All of those matters need to be distinguished from other phenomena like fisheries crime.

But even just within IUU fishing, regional variation can be vital. For example, it is impossible to talk about IUU fishing in Ghana and not understand the concept of Saiko. Saiko is a form of transshipment at sea whereby industrial vessels and artisanal canoes exchange catch, taking advantage of what each other can legally land. The practice occurs elsewhere, but under a different name.

And while Saiko is a technical term in Ghana, colloquial terms are used throughout the world, often as if they were legally-based. “International waters,” for example, is not a legal term of art, yet many believe it is. It is a colloquial term to describe both the High Seas and the areas where High Seas freedoms apply. Generally, that means anywhere outside of the 12 nautical mile territorial sea – the sovereign jurisdiction of the coastal state. Location is critical for understanding what can be done about a maritime situation, and not being precise in identifying that location can be catastrophic. While there is no problem with using a colloquial term in certain circumstances, in other cases, it may obscure the path to resolution.

Similarly, the use of maritime terminology for political purposes can create real problems. In the span of less than a week at the end of April 2026, amid a ceasefire, the United States Secretary of Defense accused the Iranian Navy of being “a gang of pirates,” and the Iranian government accused the United States of “acting like pirates.” Ironically, the President of the United States went on to describe his own Navy’s blockade enforcement by claiming “we’re like pirates,” seemingly validating the Iranian accusation. While this political rhetoric may seem appealing to both sides from a public perception standpoint, as a matter of law, neither party could engage in piracy for failing to meet the “private ends” requirement under international law. In other words, states can’t legally engage in “piracy” in general, and they certainly can’t do so in the territorial sea of a state, which is where the incidents at issue were taking place. At a time when maritime claims are holding 20% of the world’s energy supply hostage, using technical maritime terms colloquially can add to the confusion and, once again, complicate the processes of resolving key issues.

Whether addressing a real-time crisis, communicating critical information, reporting an incident, or developing new laws and policies, if we do not have a common understanding of the terms we are using, we run the risk of serious harm to human life, the marine environment, and the global economy that sustains us all. We often say, “No shipping, no shopping.” But if we do not understand the difference between a shipper and a shipping line, for example, we may not be able to formulate sufficiently clear and sound policies to keep global maritime trade functioning in a way that benefits everyone.

Recognizing this challenge, the Signatory States to the Djibouti Code of Conduct/Jeddah Amendment (DCoC/JA) are developing a Common Maritime Security Lexicon, with the support of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) through the European Union-funded Crisis Response Project for the Red Sea and Western Indian Ocean (CRP-RedWIO). The initiative gives effect to decisions taken by DCoC/JA States at their High-Level Meetings. At the Seventh High-Level Meeting in Dar es Salaam in November 2024, States agreed to develop a standard lexicon of terminology for use within the DCoC Information Sharing Network (ISN). This mandate was reinforced at the Eighth High-Level Meeting in Mauritius in November 2025.

While originating as a DCoC/JA initiative, the Lexicon is intended to support maritime security cooperation across the Western Indian Ocean, Gulf of Aden and Red Sea Area, providing States, maritime security agencies, practitioners and regional and international partners with a shared understanding of key maritime security terminology and concepts. In doing so, it will strengthen communication, information sharing, interoperability, policy development and operational cooperation.

Given its comprehensive scope and the breadth of maritime security issues and terminology it addresses, it is hoped that the Lexicon will extend beyond the DCoC region and ultimately provide the basis for adoption as a global maritime security lexicon. Such a common framework of terminology and understanding would represent an important contribution to international maritime governance, enabling States and organizations to communicate and cooperate more effectively at a time of increasing maritime complexity and turbulence, and helping to address disorder and discord in the maritime domain for the benefit of the global community.

Dr. Ian Ralby is President of Auxilium Worldwide, a charitable non-profit that works on ocean governance, and CEO of I.R. Consilium, a maritime and resource security consultancy. He's considered a leading expert on maritime law and security issues, having worked in more than 100 countries around the world.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.