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Monday, March 31, 2025

These beautiful photos hint ships’ routes as they transfer


Utilizing the US Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Affiliation’s Marine Cadastre instrument, you possibly can obtain 16 years of detailed every day ship actions, in addition to “transit rely” maps generated from a 12 months’s price of information displaying every ship’s amassed paths. The information is collected fully from ground-based stations alongside the US coasts.

I downloaded all of 2023’s transit rely maps and loaded them up in geographic data system software program known as QGIS to visualise this 12 months of marine site visitors.

The maps are summary and electrical. With landmasses eliminated, the ship traces resemble long-exposure photographs of sparklers, high-energy particle collisions, or strands of fiber-optic wire.

Victoria, British Columbia, and Seattle.

DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA

Lake Huron

DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA

Savannah, Georgia

DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA

Louisiana

DATA: NOAA; MAP: JON KEEGAN / BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC DATA

Zooming in on these maps, you may see unusual geometric patterns of good circles, or traces in a grid. A few of these are fishing grounds, others are scientific surveys mapping the seafloor, and others characterize boats going to and from offshore oil rigs, particularly off Louisiana’s gulf coast.

Hiding in plain sight

Having a worldwide, near-real-time system for monitoring the exact actions of all ships at sea seems like an important innovation—except you’re attempting to maintain your ships’ actions and cargoes secret.

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