Australian Vessel Locations from Craft Tracking System, January-April 2023

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Craft Tracking System provides vessel location data for January to April 2023. This dataset contains hourly position reports for cargo ships, fishing vessels, passenger ships, and other vessel types across Australia's Search and Rescue Region. Data is derived from terrestrial and satellite Automatic Identification System (AIS) sources.

Use Cases

• Mapping shipping lane usage and vessel density based on described high cargo traffic between international destinations and Australian ports.
• Analyzing fishing vessel distribution based on described activity in the Indian Ocean, Coral Sea, and Arafura Seas.
• Studying port congestion patterns based on the description of cargo ships waiting in grid patterns at large ports.
• Investigating regional industrial activity, such as oil and gas operations in Western Australia, based on described vessel traffic patterns.
• Comparing vessel traffic inside and outside the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone based on the described drop in tracking at the EEZ boundary.

Strengths

• Covers a defined four-month period from January to April 2023.
• Includes multiple vessel types such as cargo ships, fishing vessels, passenger ships, pilot vessels, sailing boats, and tankers.
• Provides hourly temporal resolution for vessel position reports.
• Spatial coverage includes Australia's Search and Rescue Region, encompassing domestic and adjacent international waters.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description notes the data does not specifically indicate whether vessels are domestic or international.

Provenance

Source

Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) Craft Tracking System

Collection Method

Derived from terrestrial and satellite Automatic Identification System (AIS) data sources.

Time Range

January 2023 - April 2023

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-10 19:29:14.185277; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia's Search and Rescue Region, including the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone and adjacent international waters such as the Indian Ocean, Coral Sea, and Arafura Sea.