Abstract, electric and revealing.

September 19, 2024 1:04 PM

Explore the beautiful, intricate paths of ships over a year - tracked from America's busiest ports to the open ocean via AIS marine tracking data.
posted by mhoye (11 comments total)

I downloaded all of 2023's transit count maps and loaded them up in QGIS to visualize this year of marine traffic.
The resulting maps are abstract, electric and revealing. . When you remove the landmasses from the map and leave only the ship traces, the lines resemble long-exposure photos of sparklers, high-energy particle collisions, or strands of illuminated fiber optic wire. However, when you reveal ports, harbors, islands, and ferry lines, the ship traces take on meaning and order.

fantastic post!
posted by chavenet at 1:56 PM on September 19

now do 1942
posted by torokunai at 2:01 PM on September 19

1942 antedates every single piece of technology involved in this with the exception of "boat", unfortunately.
posted by mhoye at 2:08 PM on September 19 [3 favorites]

Predate? No antedate!...The cure for the common date!
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 2:25 PM on September 19

A few years back when there was a dock strike/slowdown at the Port of LA, you could get up on one of LA's many ridgelines and on a clear day see dark spiderlines of ships waiting to get to shore.

I was waiting on a set of runs on a new book and I knew that somewhere out there bobbing off the coast was a container with a pallet of things with my name on them!
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:53 PM on September 19 [1 favorite]

Some nice accompaniment: 30 Days At Sea Timelapse

Container ship calling at Aden, Singapore and Hong Kong. For the photosensitive: thunderstorms between 3:30 and 3:40.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:17 PM on September 19 [3 favorites]

This is very cool. On the map of O‘ahu, you can see little back & forth tracks around many of the locations where the state has FADs deployed.
posted by deadbilly at 3:18 PM on September 19

Fascinating.

Is there an explanation for the fractal/flame function-like details, e.g. in the lobster boat plot (this image)?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:50 AM on September 20

Mod note: Fascinating and beautiful, so of course we've added this post to the sidebar and Best Of blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:33 AM on September 20

Insert Clever Name Here, I think that's to do with the shape of the coastline. There are tons of little islands and inlets all over that area. The vessel tracks wrap around them and then go straight once they hit open water, so that adds to the effect.
posted by deadbilly at 4:33 PM on September 20

> Is there an explanation for the fractal/flame function-like details, e.g. in the lobster boat plot (this image)?

I think that's the coastlines around Knox County, Maine, corresponding to this map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/44.0433/-68.5492. You can trace out the complex contours of the islands with the boat tracks, up to what I guess is some safe distance from hazards.

cf. Coastline paradox

The coastlines naturally have fractal dimension.
posted by runcifex at 3:03 AM on September 21