Live vessel positions, from real AIS

The map on an ocean shipment now shows the positions where the vessel was confirmed, not just where the route says it should be.

A solid violet track. Every position we confirm is recorded and joined into a line, with a dot at each fix (a single confirmed position report). Hover a dot to see when the vessel was confirmed there. It is the only solid line on the map. The route itself is drawn dashed, because it is the tracking service’s reconstruction of the voyage and not a record of where the ship went.

A marker that only shows confirmed positions. The vessel marker stands on the newest position we could confirm as a real AIS fix. Estimated positions are left off the map entirely, so the marker never moves ahead of the track to a place where nobody saw the ship. Hover it for the real fix time. The marker is an arrow pointing along the route, so you can see which way the vessel is heading at a glance.

This is the main change. Most tracking products interpolate between AIS fixes (they estimate the positions in between) and show the result as one confident dot. That dot moves along on schedule whether or not the vessel is moving. We would rather show you a true position that is a few hours old than a live-looking one that is wrong. See why tracking positions are often wrong for the longer version.

Positions refresh about once an hour, and each one carries the time the vessel was confirmed there. The map tells you how old each position is instead of pretending it is live.

Other map improvements in this release:

• Between two fixes that arrive a day apart, the track now follows the shape of the carrier’s route instead of cutting across headlands — or, at Panama, straight over the isthmus.
• A container crossing the Panama land bridge rides a train, and a train has no transponder. That leg is now drawn as an overland connector in its own colour, and the missing positions are explained instead of being reported as a tracking outage.
• Ports and airports on the map are clickable — click one to zoom to it, click it again to zoom back out.
• Routes crossing the antimeridian, and mostly north–south routes, now fit the map view correctly instead of showing as a thin stripe across the whole world.

The observed track starts from the moment a shipment is first tracked. We don’t reconstruct positions from before then, so for a shipment that is already at sea, the track builds up over the following days instead of appearing all at once.

FAQ #

Why does the vessel marker sometimes sit behind the dashed route? #

Because the marker only stands on positions confirmed by a real AIS fix, and the dashed route is the tracking service’s reconstruction of the intended path. If the last confirmed fix is six hours old, the marker stays there rather than gliding forward to a position nobody observed.

What is AIS? #

The Automatic Identification System — a transponder every commercial vessel broadcasts, picked up by shore stations and satellites. It reports the vessel’s position, not the container’s, which is why it stops being useful for your cargo after a transshipment.

Why is there a gap in the track at Panama? #

Some containers cross the isthmus by rail rather than through the locks, and a train carries no AIS transponder. Trackberry draws that leg as an overland connector in its own colour instead of reporting the silence as a tracking failure.