Step By Step Process
ShipTracks collects half a million reports of vessel data daily. That is 15-20 gigabytes of useful information! We can use this info to provide spreadsheet reports but also show visual data for vessel movement over time; which can be helpful when you want to investigate an incident or learn about vessel patterns
Click on the Archive tab icon
Search for vessels of interest by name, IMO or MMSI. Once you have found and selected vessels for which you want to display historical data select a date range. Keep in mind when selecting the date range you can pull data for up 30 consecutive days; if you are searching for playback data for just one day, you can search in 6-hour intervals.
Download Vs Download Unlimited
Once you click "Download" the ShipTracks data system will remove all vessels from display except for the ship(s) of interest. After playback is finished, AIS data will be shown at five-minute intervals from beginning to end. Click on Play to start viewing vessel movement over the selected time period. In addition to the 30 consecutive search days, you can go back 3 to 5 years from the present day of conducting the search.
With "Download Unlimited" you will be able to see every AIS data point received from the vessel. In some cases, this can be as close as 12 seconds between each point. This is a lot more data and therefore, Download Unlimited can only be used from the present day of the search to the past 30 consecutive days. You can use Download Unlimited after using the Download feature. It is important to note that Download Unlimited will display up to an hour of vessel data at a time, 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the time marker.
Search an area without specifying Vessels
Another cool trick within Archive Mode is the ability to playback vessels in a certain area. Just skip the vessel part search of the process and zoom in on the area of interest. If the area is too big now that ShipTracks will automatically zoom into the area after a pop-up is displayed.
Once you click search ShipTracks will display all vessels that passed through the area in the given time frame.
Tips and Tricks
- AFTER DRAGGING THE PROGRESS BAR TO A PERIOD OF INTEREST PRESS PLAY AGAIN TO BRING UP DATA POINTS.
- DOWNLOAD UNLIMITED ONLY WORKS FOR THE PAST 30 DAYS.
- ZOOM OUT IF THE ARCHIVE AREA WORKED BUT NO VESSELS ARE IN DISPLAY.