The Ships of San Francisco

Mapbox has created an impressive animated map visualization of 24 hours of marine traffic in the San Francisco Bay. Ships in the SF Bay uses ship telemetry data to map all of the marine traffic in the bay on September 1st, 2014.

The map sidebar does a great job of explaining the reasons behind the patterns in the data and how ship trip traffic is organised in the San Francisco Bay. As you scroll down the map you can follow the process of a ship entering the bay on the dedicated ship lanes, waiting for a harbor pilot and finally entering a port to unload its cargo.

The map sidebar also examines the patterns of San Francisco Bay's ferries crossing the harbor and the movements of pleasure boats in the shallower waters. Water depth is visualized on the map using bathymetry data from NOAA.

You can also use the clock control at the top right of the map to watch the movement of ship traffic in the San Francisco Bay over the course of the whole of September 1st, 2014. Just move the hands around on the clock to change the time of day.