At sea
Live ship tracker
Ships broadcast their position, speed and destination over AIS. TAKIP draws the ones it hears, up to 20,000 at a time, and keeps them moving.
What you see
- Cargo ships, tankers, passenger ships, fishing boats, and military, service and leisure vessels, each a filter you can switch off.
- “Underway only” hides ships at anchor or moored, to show what is actually moving.
- Click a ship for its name, type, speed, heading, destination and MMSI, with links to MarineTraffic and VesselFinder.
- Major ports and ten key chokepoints are marked, with a live count of the ships near each port.
Where the data comes from
- aisstream.ioA live stream of AIS messages relayed from receivers around the world.
The map asks for new positions every 10 seconds. A ship not heard from for 10 minutes is dropped.
Good to know
- AIS is mostly heard from the shore, so ships far out at sea often drop out. Coverage is best near busy coasts and ports.
- Warships and some others switch AIS off. A ship’s type and destination are typed in by its crew and are not always right.
- Port volumes and rankings are reference figures, not live; the counts of ships near each port are live.
Goes well with
Shipping chokepointsTraffic through the world’s shipping chokepoints from IMF PortWatch: daily transits through Hormuz, Suez, Bab el-Mandeb, Malacca and more, against normal.
Undersea cablesThe undersea cables that carry the internet between continents, on a map with where each one lands, under live ships, outages and more.
World news on the mapBreaking news placed on a live map: reports from news wires and public Telegram channels pinned to the places they name, beside GDELT’s coded events.