Those who have to face a long ship trip this summer, those who are passionate about boat trips and those who want to keep the ferry trip under control can do so on the internet from a computer or smartphone, with a control of the route of the ships almost in real time . You can therefore check the traffic on the seas of almost all the world, finding on the world map the position of normal passenger ferries, cruise ships, fishing boats, cargo and even smaller boats and yachts.
The site that provides this service is Marine Traffic, very complete and also available in Italian.
Marine Traffic offers applications for Android phones ( From Google Play ) and for iPhone from the App Store .
On the Marine Traffic website you can enlarge any point on the map ( Google Maps ) to find the various boats during their journey.
The ships are located almost in real time, with a maximum delay of one hour.b The icons of the ships are colored differently according to the type of boat. On the left side you can see a legend that associates each color to the various models: Passenger ship, Cargo ship, Tanker ship, Fast ship, Tugboat, Yacht and ships or even small unknown boats.
By means of the check boxes, the display of one or more types of ships can be excluded. By clicking on the various icons you have more details of that boat which, I remember, is really in that geographical position on the sea. In the form you can know what nationality it is, what model it is, the name, the speed of navigation and the destination and, for some, you can also see a photo. The ships displayed on the map are those equipped with the AIS automatic navigation system, which however only detects ships close to the coast and not in the open sea. Marine Traffic also allows you to search for ships by type, to see data from all ports in the world and also has a large gallery of images and photos for enthusiasts.
Alternatively, also useful for making comparisons, there is the VesselFinder site that shows the movement in real time of all the ships in the world . Here too you can click on each ship or boat to see precise information on the name, nationality and other data.
VesselFinder also has free apps for Android and iPhone.
In another article, how to follow the flight routes in real time on Google Maps .
