Perhaps less popular than Flight Radar, its counterpart for airplanes, the Marine Traffic website has gained more notoriety since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation to American and Israeli strikes at the end of February. On the online interface, you can track live maritime traffic worldwide, follow ships, view photos, or check if the Chinese will, yes or no, defy the American blockade.
While sites like Vessel Finder, Vessel Tracker, or Ship Spotting exist, Marine Traffic is widely the leader in its field, with over two million monthly organic clicks. Figures show a particular interest since the beginning of the war, especially among users in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.
The Automatic Identification System data
Sites like Marine Traffic retrieve data from what is called the Automatic Identification System (AIS) of ships, the equivalent of a transponder for airplanes. It is mandatory for a large majority of vessels and allows for the transmission of information such as the boat’s identifier, position, departure port, route, speed, arrival port, type of boat, tonnage, and more. The AIS transmission frequency provides an almost instantaneous overview of maritime traffic anywhere on the globe.
In practice, with Marine Traffic, you can precisely see what is happening in real-time in the Strait of Hormuz. On the map, points represent stationary ships while arrows indicate moving ships and their direction. The colors indicate the type of vessel, red for tankers (oil tanker, chemical tanker), green for cargo ships (container ships), blue for passenger ships, or light blue for special vessels (tugs, military). Just click on a marker to see the ship’s name, photo, and all the free information, because there is, of course, a paid version of the site.
Thanks to this, we can observe, this Tuesday at 1 pm, that ships have passed or are about to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. This is notably the case of the tanker Peace Gulf, registered in Panama, which departed from Oman and is heading to the port of Hamriya, in the United Arab Emirates. We also see the container ship Rayen, departing from Zhuhai, China, sailing through the strait towards Iran without indicating its destination port.
Not all ships are visible
Marine Traffic allows you to see a lot of things, but not everything. Ships adhering to the international Solas convention are required to have an AIS and operate it, which includes all commercial vessels over 15 meters and vessels carrying more than 11 passengers. While AIS is optional for pleasure craft, fishermen, or small commercial boats, most of these users have voluntarily adopted it while retaining the ability to disconnect it when they want.
On the other hand, what cannot be tracked on Marine Traffic are military vessels. Despite knowing that several American ships are located off the coast of the Arabian Sea or the Gulf of Oman, it is impossible to locate them precisely. Despite its size and the knowledge of its route to this sector, the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle has not emitted an AIS signal for over 2,300 days and remains unlocatable on Marine Traffic. Of course, Iranian speedboats and military vessels are also invisible.
