I live in a small town in southeast Alaska, where there's only a few small yachts; most boats in the harbors are either fishing boats or small boats for personal use. There's one yacht in the harbor next to the school I teach at.

I clicked on a random icon near Seattle, and it was the one yacht I see every day on my walk to school:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/of/ships/shipid:45556...

Another southeasterner!

I just watched a tug come around an island in the app, then saw it out my window irl. Very cool!

I work with a lot of fishing vessels in the Gulf and Bering Sea; it is very cool to see a picture of the boat and get an idea of where they are hanging out.

Wow, I just looked at your website and I'd love to get in touch. I studied physics in undergrad but went into teaching and now I'm spending more time programming.

I'd love to chat about a landslide-prediction model I've been toying around with. I'll send you an email in a moment.

And a reminder that we're not the only ones looking at the website: I found a few ships with the destination listed as 'ARMED GUARDS ONBOARD'

http://imgur.com/CRbS9nD

edit: It looks like the website either hides the locations of ships off the Somalia/Yemen coast, or the ships can choose to turn off their transponders there.

Most likely the captain choosing to turn it off. If you look at Coast Guard & Pilot boats they'll usually leave it on as they leave the dock and make their way out. Then it's off. Not very effective at interdiction if you're broadcasting your location.

I don't think it is on fire, look more like they are just flaring stuff.

It's definitely flaring. Just look at the other images. Due to the way the flare is placed it just looks like it's on fire. It's still an emergency flare and looks like a pretty bad situation. I've worked on similar drill rigs and i would not want to be on one that is flaring that much.

http://imgur.com/FTFgz5U

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:185...

No, it was definitely a fire: http://www.naroomanewsonline.com.au/story/1345250/ship-spott...

Definitely a fire, yes, but also definitely an intentional one. Look at the images others have posted in the thread: http://imgur.com/FTFgz5U. It has a flare at platform level sticking out one side.

My bad then. That caption on the article I linked is pretty misleading.

Offshore and relatively remote crude rigs commonly flare off natural gas because of the cost involved in attaching them to collection pipelines (and infeasibility of condensing it to LNG). That is why the Bakken fields can be seen from space at night: http://www.ceres.org/industry-initiatives/oil-and-gas/gas-fl...

What I always wonder: why flare it off instead of using the gas to provide for electricity and heat for local usage?

Excessive amounts past what is needed for local heat and electricity. North Dakota did recently pass legislation requiring more efficient/environmentally friendly storage/processing/usage of natural gas that would've previously been flared, regardless of how economically viable it is.

EDIT: I'm mistaken. North Dakota gave the industry an extra 10 months to meet these requirements.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/24/us-north-dakota-fl...

> Governor Jack Dalrymple and the two other members of the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC) voted unanimously to change the date when companies must capture 85 percent of natural gas produced from their wells to Nov. 1, 2016.

Classy North Dakota.

Because it's a massive safety risk, and believe it or not, the cost is not with doing that. There is a lot of the gas. You must control it.

Methane is heavier than air and it will pool down and make a potential FOOOOM!!! event. Unscheduled release of energy bad. Asphyxiation by methane bad. There's no odorant and you can't smell it.

It can be controlled though, you just need to be willing to pay for the infrastructure to do so.

Agreed. I'd love to see it myself.

Methane is lighter than air.

Nat. Gas may or may not be just methane. You are absolutely correct for what's called "dry gas".

This is a drill rig and does not have any oil/gas production facilities. The pressure in a well can be very unpredictable and is very dangerous to connect directly to generators/heaters. I's much safer to flare it off for the short period when plugging the well.

Oil rigs have specially designed flare stacks, so you won't really see flare fires right on the deck like that.

http://photorator.com/photos/images/north-sea-oil-rig-flarin...

The density map is also fascinating. You can make out the offshore wind fields in the north sea.

It's also interesting to see how busy the waterways in / around the North Sea / European west coast are compared to the US. But then, the US is a large landmass and probably has a lot more ground transport (e.g. trains)

IIRC, most stuff gets around the US on 18-wheelers using highways. (Train infrastructure in the US is laughably terrible.)

That's not the case, freight trains in the USA are excellent.

European railways prioritise passengers, but much freight moves by water.

It really depends on what you're transporting.

If you want to move 100 tank cars of crude oil, or 100 cars of coal, then a freight train will accomplish that pretty easily. You can even move a truck trailer via rail, that's called intermodal.

But if you want to deliver 50,000 pounds of freight across the country in three days, you can't do it by rail. You pay a tractor trailer "team" (e.g. often a husband and wife)* to pick up your load on the West Coast on Thursday and deliver it on the East Coast on Monday. They'll take turns driving all weekend to accomplish that.

Bulk stuff moves by train or barge, relatively heavy relatively time sensitive stuff moves by truck, light and time sensitive stuff moves by air.

*Edit: that sounds complicated or risky, but it's not. Manufacturers use logistics companies to handle these details. Logistics companies are also good at quickly moving LTL (less-than-truckload) loads across long distances by consolidating multiple shipments into one trailer.

Most stuff does indeed get around the US by truck:

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

I've also heard our freight rail infrastructure described as excellent through, so maybe if you compared it to other countries in cost per ton/mile it would come out well.

Those waterways fill the same sort of role that barges on the Mississippi fill in the US.

Wow, China's coast is impressive!

Turn on the density maps and zoom out. It is awesome to see commonly used shipping lanes light up.

This site seems pretty awesome. Although on my second click to it it says I already have a notification? I don't even have an account!