

Visualizing Ocean Shipping - kumarski
http://sappingattention.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/visualizing-ocean-shipping.html

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Yetanfou

        There aren't many truly seasonal events,
        but a few stand out. There are regular
        summer voyages from Scotland to Hudson's
        Bay, and from Holland up towards Spitsbergen,
        for example: both these appear as huge
        convoys moving in sync. (What were those about?)
    

The yearly trips from the Netherlands up to the North are most likely whalers
going out to hunt and coming back with their catch.

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reitanqild
Does anyone have pointers to anything like this, freely available, for modern
shipping? (i.e. after GPS and AIS)

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mryan
Not quite the same, but you can view the position/heading of some ships here:
[https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/](https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/)

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reitanqild
Yep. Use that a lot as a reference. (AIS transponders send quite a lot
information and also a lot of people upload photos of vessels that can be
viewed at marinetraffic.com)

There are also a few other projects that have overlapping data. (aprs sites,
e.g. aprs.fi - more of an amateur radio thing but will still pick up lots of
interesting signals)

(Edit: perhaps more interesting to people around here an usb/serial ais
receiver can be had for a few hundred dollars and there is a site called
[http://www.aishub.net/](http://www.aishub.net/) where you can get access to
the firehose provided you cover your area. Disclaimer: I never tried aishub.)

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obayesshelton
let's hope pirates don't have computers.

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reitanqild
I think the post is more about older ships logs.

For shipping there are rules in place on who are allowed to turn of tracking
and under what circumstances.

Also even if "security by obscurity" etc is heavily used it doesn't mean it is
a good strategy : )

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obayesshelton
Ahhh :) I might book that cruise now.

