Absolutely, it's known to be a common occurrence. In South Africa, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has a solution called SeaFAR [0] t

Absolutely, it's known to be a common occurrence. In South Africa, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has a solution called SeaFAR [0] that combines satellite-based AIS reception with low-resolution synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery to track ships with AIS turned off. The solution uses some machine learning approaches to not only classify (and if possible, recognise) ships from low-resolution SAR imagery, but to associate those with their tracks from before AIS was turned off. I've seen the solution in use, it's surprisingly effective. I have no doubt there are similar approaches elsewhere, this is just one I'm familiar with. [0] http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=43768 http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&vie...