Ten Years of Global Marine Traffic

The Global Marine Traffic Density Service (GMTDS) map visualizes global marine traffic over the last ten years. The map is designed to support a number of uses, including monitoring fishing activity, monitoring port activity, and environmental and economic activity monitoring.

The GMTDS Map has processed hundreds of billions of AIS signals from over ten years of marine traffic around the world to create this global map of marine traffic density. Using the map you can access and explore over ten years of marine traffic around the world.

Marine traffic density is shown on the map as hours per square kilometer, revealing how many hours in total ships have spent in each square kilometer. You can use the map's time slider to filter the data by month and use the playback controls to animate global marine traffic over time.

You can filter the type of marine traffic shown on the map using the map sidebar. These filter controls include options to select the 'ship type' shown on the map. The ship type option includes cargo vessels, fishing vessels, tankers and even ice breakers.You can also filter the map by draft, which records how far below the water line a vessel's hull normally sits. This is an important consideration for marine navigation, for example for vessels traversing through ship canals and locks. The 'loitering' filter allows you to view where vessels have spent more than six hours in a single cell (square kilometer). 

Also See

MarineTraffic - uses AIS data to create a live real-time map of global ship traffic

VesselFinder - another real-time map of global shipping traffic