Live map
Track vessels in real time across global ports with Overwatch's live map — color-coded by type, directional icons, and instant vessel detail lookups.
The live map displays real-time vessel positions across monitored ports. Each vessel appears as a directional triangle icon colored by vessel type, rotated to match its current course. You can filter by vessel type, search for specific ships, toggle map overlays, and replay a vessel's recent route.
Open the live map
Navigate to Live Map from the top navigation bar, or go directly to axiomoverwatch.io/live-map. To jump to a specific port, append the port slug to the URL — for example, axiomoverwatch.io/live-map/santos or axiomoverwatch.io/live-map/rotterdam.
Vessel icons
Vessels appear as elongated triangle markers that point in the direction the vessel is travelling. The triangle shape follows the same 2.4:1 bow-forward silhouette used across the platform. Only vessels moving faster than 0.5 knots display a directional icon — slower or anchored vessels render as round dot markers instead, since course-over-ground readings are unreliable at low speed.
Each vessel type has a distinct color:
| Vessel type | Color |
|---|---|
| Bulk carrier | Gold (#e5a836) |
| Tanker | Cyan (#00D4FF) |
| Container | Teal (#4a9e8e) |
| LNG carrier | Purple (#8B5CF6) |
| General cargo | Green (#7CB518) |
| Other | Gray (#9CA3AF) |
Vessel details
Hover over a vessel to see a quick summary: name, type, IMO number, flag, speed, draft, and destination.
Click a vessel to open a detailed popup that includes:
- Vessel photo (when available)
- IMO, flag, speed, draft, DWT, and build year
- Reported destination
- Recent port calls with arrival and departure times
- Nearby weather conditions (temperature, wind speed, and direction)
- A link to the full vessel intelligence page
Free-tier accounts see the most recent port call. Upgrade to view the last five ports.
Map controls
Vessel type filter
Use the vessel type filter to show or hide specific categories. All six types are enabled by default. Deselect a type to remove those vessels from the map.
Vessel search
Type a vessel name, IMO number, or keyword into the search bar to locate a specific ship. Results update as you type. Select a result to fly to the vessel's position on the map.
Map style
Switch between three base map styles (CARTO basemaps):
- Dark — default style optimized for vessel visibility
- Light — higher contrast for daytime use
- Voyager — a balanced mid-contrast style with labeled geography
Nautical chart overlay
Toggle the nautical chart overlay to display OpenSeaMap seamarks (buoys, lights, shipping lanes) on top of the base map. The overlay is available on both the MapLibre and Leaflet renderers.
Course projection lines
Enable course projection lines to display a dashed line ahead of each moving vessel, showing its projected position 30 minutes into the future based on current speed and heading.
Port zones
Toggle port zones to display geofence, anchorage, and berth boundaries on the map. Zone labels appear at higher zoom levels.
Vessel trails
Enable vessel trails to render the recent track of every vessel in the current viewport. Use the trail duration control to adjust how many hours of history are shown (up to 48 hours).
24-hour route replay
Route replay is available only when viewing a port-specific map. Click a vessel and select Replay 24h route in the detail popup to animate the vessel's track over the past 24 hours. The replay draws the full route as a faded line and animates a highlighted path with a moving vessel marker that follows the recorded positions. Replay duration scales with the number of recorded positions (12–28 seconds). Click Stop replay in the replay banner to end the animation early.
When no port is in scope, the replay button appears disabled in the detail popup with a prompt to select a port first. Open a port-specific view (for example, axiomoverwatch.io/live-map/santos) to enable route replay.
Port-specific views
Each monitored port has a dedicated page at axiomoverwatch.io/live-map/{port-slug}. The port view opens the map centered on that port and displays a count of vessels currently in port. Available ports include Santos, Houston, New Orleans, Rotterdam, Singapore, Norfolk, Novorossiysk, Newcastle, Paranaguá, Port Hedland, Constanța, Hamburg, and Shanghai.
Renderer fallback
The live map uses MapLibre GL for hardware-accelerated rendering. If WebGL is unavailable or the basemap styles fail to load, the map automatically falls back to a Leaflet-based renderer with equivalent vessel icons drawn as SVG triangles. A banner at the top of the map indicates when the fallback renderer is active, and the map retries the primary renderer after 45 seconds.
You can force the Leaflet renderer by appending ?renderer=leaflet to the URL.
Vessel data refreshes automatically every five minutes. When you pan or zoom the map, the visible vessels update to match the new viewport.
Terminal
A keyboard-driven maritime HUD with 12 live panels across TRADE and SANC modes for port flows, sanctions risk, and dark-fleet monitoring at a glance.
AIS coverage
How Overwatch collects AIS vessel positions across the global fleet, configures coverage area and density, and tunes ingestion rates by region and vessel type.