Map of ship tracking in Queesnland (2013)

This map shows the density of ship vessel movements over a three month period (8th May - 22nd August 2013) along the Queensland coastline, including the Torres Strait region. The location of the vessels were tracked using the Automatic Identification System (AIS) at approximately a 1 hour interval. Each point on the map represent the location of a vessel at a particular instant of time during the study period. The map is made from approximately 950,000 vessel track locations.

The AIS system is mandated for vessels of 300 gross tonnage and upwards engaged on international voyages, cargo ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards not engaged on international voyages, as well as passenger ships (more than 12 passengers), irrespective of size. It is also use by some smaller vessels. It is not known from the original data what the size and type of each of the vessel that make up the data shown in the map.

Each of the insert maps shows a zoom in of some of the major ports along the coast. Mackay, Hay point and Gladstone ports show ships moored offshore in a grid pattern waiting to be processed.

You can view an interactive version of this map. The original source of the data used in this map comes from the Spatial@AMSA Historic Vessel Tracking website. It was processed into a shapefile for the e-Atlas and is available for download from the metadata page for this dataset.

Lawrey, Eric. (2013) World Bright Earth e-Atlas Basemap. e-Atlas Archive. http://e-atlas.org.au/data/uuid/ac57aa5a-233b-4c2c-bd52-1fb40a31f639