Ship Tracker

July 15, 2006 9:18 PM

Where all my ships at?
posted by mr_crash_davis (32 comments total)

Cool link. Bookmarking this so I can cross-reference it to sightings at the port.
posted by BeerFilter at 9:26 PM on July 15, 2006

Wow, this would have come in handy at my old job - riding the cruise ships installing equipment.
posted by anthill at 9:28 PM on July 15, 2006

This is very cool. I can track my favorite "Deadliest Catch" boats and also the St. Jude, which provided the (yummy) tuna I ate for dinner tonight!
posted by donovan at 9:29 PM on July 15, 2006

Fuck, it's Stavros!
posted by eriko at 9:37 PM on July 15, 2006

That's just fucked up, man. These internets are getting to precise. :-( I don't want to know my world that well and I want to be left alone.
posted by persona non grata at 9:43 PM on July 15, 2006

Why not book a route? (said the vicar to the actress).
posted by strawberryviagra at 9:49 PM on July 15, 2006 [2 favorites]

"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and..."

[Thanks for the post.]
posted by trip and a half at 10:06 PM on July 15, 2006

"Who's agitating my dots? Are you agitating my dots?"
posted by MrZero at 10:12 PM on July 15, 2006

This is cool. I cant wait for teh google maps for blackberry version
posted by subaruwrx at 10:27 PM on July 15, 2006

strawberryviagra: Nice link. Thanks. Never seen that before. Fascinating.
posted by BeerFilter at 10:28 PM on July 15, 2006

Makes me feel better about falling overboard.
posted by Frank Grimes at 10:31 PM on July 15, 2006

Makes me feel better about falling overboard.

As far as I can see, a hell of a lot of those dots are drifting buoys, and I don't think there would be anyone on board to toss you a rope...
posted by Jimbob at 10:37 PM on July 15, 2006

I noticed the waters off Lebanon and Israel are looking very empty right now...

(Just observing; let's NOT talk about it)
posted by wendell at 11:30 PM on July 15, 2006

Arrr... thank ye matey. This be verrrry helpful in me next voyage.
posted by phyrewerx at 12:47 AM on July 16, 2006

I can't imagine a moment in time where I would actually need to use this service. But god damn if this isn't a cool link! Thanks crash davis!
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:20 AM on July 16, 2006

It seems so homogenous. I would have expected greater concentration.
posted by sourwookie at 3:00 AM on July 16, 2006

I would have expected to see an ant trail from Bejing to the West Coast and another one from the Suez.
posted by sourwookie at 3:06 AM on July 16, 2006

I took the Queen Mary 2 from Southampton to New York, and totally savoured the isolation....the idea that GalPal and I didn't know precisely where we were, just that we were "X days from New York" resonated with us somehow. Very cool application and a nifty link - thanks for posting! (that being said I WILL NOT bookmark this link as Cunard has wireless internet access on the QM2 and I'd be just too damn tempted...)
posted by Mutant at 3:54 AM on July 16, 2006

This is extremely cool and godlike - each ship relays local weather information, even - but I don't think this shows every single ship sailing in the oceans - maybe like a quarter. E.g., it doesn't show anything in the Gulf of Naples, which has ships and ferries coming and going day and night, but it shows all the ferries between France and Corsica. I wonder why some are shown, some not?
Fascinating though, thanks. How long til we can do this with people?
posted by Flashman at 5:11 AM on July 16, 2006

Ah, these are the 4000-odd ships that are part of the US 'Voluntary Observing Scheme' - to collect meteorological data, not specifically intended to track the ships:

A peak in total VOS was reached in 1984/85 when about 7700 ships worldwide were on the WMO VOS Fleet List. Since then there has been an irregular but marked decline and in June 1994, the Fleet strength had dropped to about 7200 ships. These numbers have continued to decline and are currently estimated at only about 4000 ships worldwide. As might be expected, realtime reports from the VOS are heavily concentrated along the major shipping routes, primarily in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans.
posted by Flashman at 5:23 AM on July 16, 2006

Incredibly cool, great post.
posted by sidereal at 5:23 AM on July 16, 2006

Fuck, it's Stavros!

Coming soon on Adult Swim.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:34 AM on July 16, 2006

"Who's agitating my dots? Are you agitating my dots?"

Same thought here.
posted by danb at 5:50 AM on July 16, 2006

I would have expected to see an ant trail from Bejing to the West Coast and another one from the Suez.

Beijing isn't connected to the ocean.
posted by alidarbac at 6:04 AM on July 16, 2006

Cool post.
posted by briank at 6:24 AM on July 16, 2006

"Fascinating though, thanks. How long til we can do this with people?"

I've been assuming governments are doing this already for anyone with a GPS in their cars... or perhaps anyone on a cellphone have been trackable for years. It just isn't available on the Internet yet. ...but then I'm paranoid and think the dogs are following me.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:59 AM on July 16, 2006

Awesome link for a data junkie like me.
posted by chimaera at 9:57 AM on July 16, 2006

I remember how satisfying it was when I could afford my first big bugger with bow thrusters.

Of course, I've moved on to interstellar armadas, now. Is there a Web tracker for those?
posted by dansdata at 10:42 AM on July 16, 2006

Another cool one is AISLive.com; as with so many of these things, the full coolness cannot be seen without paying, and you can't even get beyond "oh my goodness, what a lot of ships there are in Northern Europe" without registering, but really, if you want to see where lots of ships are from their Automatic Identification Systems, this is way cool. (screenshots, if I can - New York Harbour, the Dover Straits, from the free version).

The system only works where the ships are in range of land, so no mid-ocean points here, but it's kind of cool in these congested waters. And if anyone can find the Fusus for me, somewhere in the Caribbean, that'd be cool, too.
posted by Lebannen at 11:12 AM on July 16, 2006

Wow, I clicked on this page and the first thing I saw was a ship I'd actually been on, the M/V Matanuska. Thanks mcd!
posted by jessamyn at 3:26 PM on July 16, 2006

Who's agitatin' my dots?
posted by rhythim at 4:13 PM on July 16, 2006

This should be titles "Dude where's my ship?"
posted by zorro astor at 5:10 PM on July 16, 2006