Mildly Interesting

Trivia time!

Yes, over a certain size. AIS class A transponders are mandatory on ships over 24meters. Smaller than that, and many people use them anyway because it's convenient. Many recreational boats use class B with lower transmit power.

Anyone can operate an AIS transponder in receive-only, enabling you to receive the data yourself. This is how sites like that operate - Many volunteers who receive and forward the NMEA string to the site. Hell, if you have one of those cheap USB-SDRs you can roll your own at minimal cost. Decoding the relevant NMEA strings (AIVDO and AIVDM, readable at 38400 baud) is a bit of a pain in the ass, as it's built around a 6-bit ASCII table. But I managed to do it with a perl hack once upon a time, so it's highly doable.

NB: While not legal, it's very easy to disable an AIS transponder temporarily. War ships often do this.

Tumbleweed

I'm glad you asked; A more reliable method for establishing position is by sending a position request via DSC (VHF channel 70 or MF 2187.5kHz), as that's a lot harder to disable. You're gonna need an ROC or GOC to do this legally, though. As well as a MMSI, come to think of it.

Source: I used to work with maritime comm systems, including installation of both VHF radios, MF radios, and AIS transponder. I have a GOC.

Works for all counties except the following, who consistently disable AIS and LRIT for various reasons: China, Russia, Iran and Senegal.

So while the International Maritime Organization requires these devices be enabled, the aforementioned counties just ignore it when disabling AIS suites their purposes (Illegally changing flags during voyage, poaching, etc).

Link to the site?

Also you can do the same thing with planes.
https://www.flightradar24.com/

Not the ones that turn off their transponders! For example, the Chinese squid jigger mother ships, the Chinese krill dragnet ships, the Chinese illegal salvage ships plundering war graves, and of course, the Chinese and Russian transship tankers smuggling sanctioned oil in international waters.

Any ship using a transponder. It's the ones that don't that are really interesting 😉

TIL, thought this were only available for plane.

Also good to know Ever Given is no where near a canal now.

I was perusing that map recently. Was kinda funny seeing a bunch of ships with clearly Russian names like "Admiral Yuri Dolgoruky" or "Cosmonaut Eugene Ponasenko" under Mongolian flag, of all others Yeah, the landlocked country. I guess there's nothing wrong with landlocked country owning ships, but I just could't get this meme out of my head

Anybody else who finds the color choice counterintuitive? At first i was wondering, why all the ships are on land.

My boat to Santorini was cancelled and I had to show the local office my proof on www.vesselfinder.com before they would believe me and helped me reschedule.

The were talking about a normal minor delay but the ship was still in port, 3 hours away.

There are some really cool ships sailing around the Mediterranean.

Just look at Club Med 2

I had a lot of fun with that so when I was in Malaga. Sat in the beach for hours with a book, a bottle of chilled rose and grilled fish takeaway from a beach side restaurant.

Identifying all the boats that trundled by and their destinations was great fun. We even saw an unlisted navy vessel.

That was a very great Internet Historian vid.

Yeah, learned about this from the WhatsGoingOnInShipping youtube channel, which is useful if you're ever curious about something going on in international shipping.

Ayy, I just saw the Internet Historian video on that!

And they told me I shouldnt even tell people where the cruise ship I was working on cruised around, even though it would be on the passenger itenerary. "Loose lips sink ships!" 🤦‍♂️

It cruises around Hawaii, btw.

Is there any concern that pirates will use this tool to find targets?

Not Knight Boat.

A useful tool for modern piracy.

Bet you can't find the Millenium Falcon