This only covers container ships btw. For full coverage of all vessels, try the 'vessel presence' layer in Global Fishing Watch's interactive map, based on a feed from Spire: https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/

Years ago I used to subscribe to a service that did this for oil tankers and tried to estimate oil to each route, they wrote a weekly summary. Eventually they decided they only wanted enterprise clients and not people like me who, working in devops, had no need for this service at all and only paid the $20 a month out of some weird fascination

Meta: I like the use of an actual globe when zoomed out. Wish more things would do this.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall–Peters_projection

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylindrical_equal-area_project...

One massive problem with AIS is that it is open. This opens it up for spoofing, intentional or not. The global map is littered with garbage AIS positions, but mostly in areas that do not have strong AIS coverage to begin.

To combat this, some countries have started to enforce their countries to use VMS (vessel monitoring system). I say some, but mostly the more resource rich countries - Norway being one of them. VMS also comes with the benefit of much more data capabilities, like fishing vessels sending catch data.

Sensor fusion to detect dark vessels is also a big growing thing. We use around 5 different sensors outside the usual AIS, VMS, LRIT to build vessel tracks. Some are experimental sensors, while others are seeing more mainstream use - like navigation radar sensing.

Maybe a challenge for private entities that want to create these sorts of apps, is data - buying even just AIS data can be expensive at scale. Countries that deal with this often engage in data exchange...some data provider receives data from you, you get some in return for them.

What is different from marinetraffic?

Seems to only have a tiny amount of ships compared to marinetraffic.com ?

I once worked on a problem: GPS tracking shipping containers, since one company had almost 1% lost/stolen each year. I had an idea of using AIS with Si4362 to get positioning data from the container ship itself, but it was nearly impossible to get access to reefer monitoring systems. We ended up just using 4G NB-IoT for coastal tracking and it did solve the problem

It almost seems like I could have lived life as a trader and traveled the seas. Don’t know the type of money involved, and I guess I wouldn’t even know where to begin doing that in real life. So much easier in video games.

I’d just be a simple TEMU hauler, no fuss, simple life. Travel the world, catch some fish.

How does this differ from something like MarineTraffic?

Seems like it's just cargo ships? And presumably not even all of them.

I'll prefer vesselfinder for marinetraffic.

Interesting, a cool resource for an API endpoint for AIS data so aisstream.io. Seems quite solid. Any one any idea of a good resource for satellite AIS data - I feel like the EU probably funded it and I can’t find anything on capricious etc.

I tried posting ais-catcher.org but it got ignored

I don't see any of the American destroyers in Hormoz

Did anyone spot the USS Abraham Lincoln?

Off topic, but I hope the UX improves. It's almost unusable.

Clicking on anything is an error-prone mess and then it hijacks the back button by changing the URL. That would be better off as a simple "share" link somewhere in the popup.

This seems useful speculating on short term oil prices. I believe the straight of hormuz may be closed or rumor of closing. Every expert seems to think that will spike oil prices.

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These tools went mainstream when the Houthis started hitting container ships. Watching AIS transponders go dark or vessels suddenly diverting around the Cape was something you just couldn't get from news coverage. And with Hormuz tensions right now, the real-time value is even higher.

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Looking good! Thanks for sharing