Amazing Marine Website Tracking All Ships At Sea

[Smith1942]

My dad, who is a former Royal Navy officer, just told me about this website. It shows every vessel at sea in the world, accurate to within one hour. You can zoom in, see photos, tracking - the lot. It even shows small private boats at harbour. Did you know that a tanker from Liberia is due in to Boston in one hour? And that information is a mere eleven minutes old.

There are currently 57,000 vessels at sea in the world. Click on "World Map" in the top left.

www.marinetraffic.com

Looking at this website makes me feel like M in James Bond!

ETA: It even shows vessels moored on land!

 

[kenny]

Whoa! So cool!
I love these kinds of things.
Thanks for sharing.

I hope pirates don't have Internet access.

 

[princesss]

Part of my job last summer included being able to track every ship my company has, so we always had a big screen up with information like this. There are also live feeds of a lot of European ports - it's fascinating to watch the ships berth.

 

[LibbyLA]

It is a cool web site, but it definitely doesn't show ALL ships at sea. The one I was on a couple of weeks ago was usually listed as "out of range" even though it was in the Gulf of Mexico within 100 miles of the Louisiana coast the entire time. There's not one boat shown in the dock area for that boat, and that's hardly possible. I doubt that all the docks are empty.

It was neat to look at some of the dots in the port and recognize names of boats I saw!

liz

 

[Jennifer W]

Oh, I love this! My day job office looks out to sea, and over a harbour - I can't resist looking up the various ships that come in there. I use this one, which is much the same, I think.
http://www.shipais.com/

 

[JewelFreak]

That is so cool! I love stuff like that too. Do all ships have GPS, then, even little private ones?

--- Laurie

 

[davi_el_mejor]

Welcome to my life! LOL

When you have to track all vessels inbound and outbound of a Captain of the Port Zone, you have back up after back up of AIS feeds LOL

We are getting a bunch of new AIS towers installed for a monitoring program.

It's also super helpful in Search and Rescue cases. Big ships are good at hearing (or not hearing ) distress calls.

PS... It doesn't always broadcast ALL the ships underway

 

[davi_el_mejor]

Whoa! So cool!
I love these kinds of things.
Thanks for sharing.

I hope pirates don't have Internet access.

Kenny - Pirates do. But, you don't need it to really be aware of where or when a Tanker/Yacht of interest comes close to you. All you need is binoculars. Their binoculars, small boats, machine guns and a willingness to do anything to survive is all they really need.

 

[Smith1942]

So, what do you do for a living, Davi? Obviously it's marine-related. I'm interested to know.

When I looked at the English Channel, I couldn't believe the sheer number of vessels on it. It looks as if there's hardly room to move!

 

[movie zombie]

totally cool!

 

[davi_el_mejor]

So, what do you do for a living, Davi? Obviously it's marine-related. I'm interested to know.

When I looked at the English Channel, I couldn't believe the sheer number of vessels on it. It looks as if there's hardly room to move!

I'm in the US Coast Guard. I work in the Command Center where we do mainly Search and Rescue response planning, but we also monitor and track commercial vessels.

This also only tracks vessels over 300gross tons (or those smaller boats who choose to have the equipment) I like to look at the Yachts in Sag Harbor New York and dream. LOL

 

[Smith1942]

Wow, what an interesting job, Davi!

 

[Snicklefritz]

Very cool!