Visualizing Ship Movements with AIS Data
https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/visualizing-ship-movements-with-ais-data/


Using NOAA’s “Marine Cadastre” tool, you can download 16 years’ worth of detailed daily ship movements (filtered to the minute), in addition to “transit count” maps generated from a year’s worth of data to show each ship's accumulated paths.

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.
art geography shipping traces | permalink | 2024-09-24 09:51:49