VesselFinder AIS tracker with new interface!

These days the free AIS tracker VesselFinder has launched a new interface based on OpenStreetMap and a lot of AJAX. The GUI is quite simple and easy to understand. It provides basic features for ship search by name or IMO, interactive map and vessel details.

Ship cruise portal - cruises, destinations, companies, ships

Ship cruise tracker at www.shipcruise.org

The new ship cruise information portal  is oriented mainly towards first-time cruisers, and all the curious ones, dreaming of traveling the high seas, with the ambition to achieve the rank of the renown old-timers in the ship cruising.

The ship cruise articles include:

• reviews of the major cruise lines
• cruise ship database
• detailed information about the cruise companies' ships
• overviews of the world's cruise destinations
• the itineraries, ports of call, shore excursions and other amenities
• articles about cruise psychology
• review of the ship cruise types and prices
• many tips and recommendations.

New AIS tracking forum by AISHub

The free raw AIS sharing service AISHub activated new AIS tech forum. The forum is a good focal point for all AIS professionals and ship tracking enthusiasts. Participation is opened for everybody after free and simple registration. However only for AISHub members receive access to AIS feeds and VT Explorer AIS viewer.

The number of AISHub members is about 130 already. AISHub is the only possible source of free AIS feeds at the moment. Many big software companies and VTS integrators are also among the members. 

Vessel tracking and monitoring system by VT Explorer

VT Explorer is a vessel tracking and monitoring software displaying real time data received by the vessels AIS transponders. The system has a friendly user interface displaying vessels on the world map. A demo version can be downloaded free from www.vtexplorer.com. Almost every day you can track about 18000 ships online and watch over 200 ports worldwide. VT Explorer visualizes all the ships that are in the range of AIS receivers on the electronic chart of vessel traffic viewer. Using this software everyone involved in maritime business can track a ship’s route they are interested in. There are various options for ship search – by IMO, MMSI, Name, Flag and other criteria.

Marine Traffic ship tracking on Google Maps

MarineTraffic.com have launched a Google Map displaying real time information about ship/vessel movements throughout the seas.

The system is based on AIS (Automatic Identification System). The International Maritime Organization (IMO) requires all vessels over 299GT to carry an AIS transponder class A on board, which transmits data on position, speed and course over ground, among some other static information, such as the vessel name, dimensions and voyage details.

MarineTraffic uses this information to plot the real time position of marine vessels on a Google Map. The vessels' positions are shown on the electronic map in the shape of boats. The tags are coloured to show if the vessel is a tanker, passenger vessel, cargo vessel, yacht etc. Clicking on a tag displayes information about the vessel and its current destination.

MarineTraffic say they can expand their area of coverage to include any area worldwide. Anyone can install a VHF antenna, an AIS receiver and start immediately sharing data and seeing the vessels onto the map.

Automatic Identification System

The UAIS (Universal Automatic Identification System), known as AIS, is a civilian information system which makes it possible to exchange data between ship and land based stations. The system has been introduced by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and it is basically an anti-collision system for vessels at sea. The system is also well suitable for monitoring the ship traffic in coastal areas. A ship equipped with AIS transponder transmits information on - ship’s name, position, course, speed, draft, type of vessel etc. The information then is transmitted via radio communication to other ships equipped with AIS as well as land based AIS stations. The land based stations can send short messages to AIS equipped vessels within in a given area, thus providing marine traffic with important traffic and safety related data.

Marine Traffic Monitoring from Space

The coastal AIS station has a very important restriction. It is not suitable for monitoring the traffic on huge open sea and ocean areas. The communication is lineof-sight allowing stations to monitor ships within about 30-40 NM of their location. Ability to monitor the traffic from space has been an expressed goal for the maritime authorities for years. Polar orbit satellites can monitor the whole area several times a day. A challenge is very large quantity of data the satellite can receive. Today more than 70000 ships have installed the necessary equipment to transmit the ordered information, the so-called Class A equipment. The demand of
Class B equipment for smaller vessels will increase the number of reports considerably. Every ship delivers 90 to 450 messages over 15 minute period. Some of the tasks for the satellite
and the ground station are to filter out the data that are of no relevance, but at the same time be able to add to the sources and time information that is necessary to separate satellite information from information to coastal stations.

Marine Traffic Blog has been started with own domain name

This blog has been started on 27th Feb 2010.

Main topics of the blog:
1) Marine Traffic Monitoring Technologies
2) Vessel Tracking sites
3) AIS data sharing