Utilizing the US Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Affiliation’s Marine Cadastre instrument, you possibly can obtain 16 years of detailed each day ship actions, in addition to “transit depend” maps generated from a yr’s value of knowledge exhibiting every ship’s gathered paths. The information is collected solely from ground-based stations alongside the US coasts.
I downloaded all of 2023’s transit depend maps and loaded them up in geographic info system software program referred to as QGIS to visualise this yr of marine site visitors.
The maps are summary and electrical. With landmasses eliminated, the ship traces resemble long-exposure pictures of sparklers, high-energy particle collisions, or strands of fiber-optic wire.
DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA
DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA
DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA
DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA
Zooming in on these maps, you may see unusual geometric patterns of excellent circles, or traces in a grid. A few of these are fishing grounds, others are scientific surveys mapping the seafloor, and others signify boats going to and from offshore oil rigs, particularly off Louisiana’s gulf coast.
Hiding in plain sight
Having a world, near-real-time system for monitoring the exact actions of all ships at sea seems like an amazing innovation—except you’re making an attempt to maintain your ships’ actions and cargoes secret.
