White markers are individual vessels broadcasting AIS in real time via AISStream.io terrestrial receivers. Coverage is strongest within 200km of coastlines with receiver infrastructure. Click any marker for vessel details.
HEATMAP LAYERS vs LIVE DOTS
The FISHING, SQUID, and PRESENCE layers are heatmaps — not individual vessel positions. Each colored cell represents aggregated vessel activity over the last 90 days across a geographic grid. Brighter = more activity. These answer where do vessels operate. The live dots answer where are specific vessels right now. Together they give you pattern of life plus current picture.
PRESENCE LAYER (teal)
All vessel types globally — cargo, tanker, military, passenger, fishing — aggregated from both terrestrial and satellite AIS. Sourced from Global Fishing Watch's full AIS dataset. Shows every major shipping lane, chokepoint, and operating area on earth including the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Strait of Hormuz.
FISHING LAYER (orange)
Vessels algorithmically confirmed as actively fishing by GFW machine learning — not just vessel presence. Accumulated fishing hours over 90 days. Vessels with AIS disabled do not appear.
SQUID LAYER (red)
Fishing effort filtered to squid jiggers only — the dominant vessel type in Chinese distant-water operations. Concentrations off the Falkland Islands and in the East/South China Seas represent the Chinese distant-water fleet, visible from space at night due to their high-intensity squid jigging lights. Overlay with CABLES to observe proximity of squid jigger concentrations to subsea cable infrastructure. AlphaSierraGaming makes no claim regarding the intentionality of squid behavior near critical undersea infrastructure. Any cephalopod-cable interaction was almost certainly accidental and in no way intentional. Probably.
WIKIMAPIA BASE LAYER
Switch the base map to WIKIMAPIA and zoom into any chokepoint for crowdsourced facility-level ground truth — tunnel networks, rail yards, port infrastructure, military installations, fuel depots, and industrial nodes that don't appear on standard chart overlays. The detail is built by people who know that ground. What you're looking at above Bab al-Mandeb is exactly why the cables below it keep getting cut.
CABLES & PIPELINES LAYER
Submarine cable routes from TeleGeography's global database overlaid with strategically significant oil and gas pipelines. Cables carry approximately 99% of the world's international internet and communications traffic. Pipelines are rendered as thick dashed lines color-coded by status: red = sabotaged (Nord Stream 1 & 2), orange = operational, yellow = partial, grey = proposed. Click any pipeline for name, type, capacity, operator, and strategic notes. Overlay with INCIDENTS to see where documented events intersect the infrastructure network.
INCIDENTS LAYER (⚓ anchor / △ pipeline)
Documented incidents involving subsea infrastructure, 2022–present. Includes anchor-dragging events that damaged or severed undersea cables and the Nord Stream 1 & 2 pipeline sabotage (September 26, 2022). Markers are color-coded by legal status: amber = investigated, orange = charged/seized, red = unsolved. Pulsing markers indicate unresolved cases. Pipeline incidents are marked △ PIPELINE INCIDENT. Where a vessel from this layer also appears in the live AIS feed, an ⚓ INCIDENT badge will appear on their manifest card. Anchor contact with subsea infrastructure in each case was almost certainly accidental and in no way intentional. Probably.
WANTED LAYER (◆ diamond)
FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitives with last known geographic position. Markers pulse red. Click for name, charges, reward amount, and direct link to the FBI wanted page. Layer is designed to expand to include INTERPOL Red Notice subjects. These are individuals, not vessels — last known position is where they were seen, not where they are now.
OCG/TCOs LAYER (☠ skull diamond)
Organized Crime Groups/Tansnational Criminal Organizations: Documented criminal-controlled maritime infrastructure at submarine cable landing points and inland waterways. Source data: DEA 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, U.S. Treasury OFAC designations, U.S. State Department. Each marker identifies the controlling organization, trafficking activity, cable systems present, and a sourced summary. Orange = active control, red = actively contested between organizations. The overlap between narco-maritime corridors and global cable infrastructure is not coincidental — criminal organizations occupy the same chokepoints that the rest of the world depends on.
THE GAP
Vessels that disable AIS — the "dark fleet" — are invisible in live dots but partially visible in heatmap layers where satellite passes detected them. The difference between what AIS reports and what radar detects is the primary indicator of gray-zone maritime operations.
SOURCES
Heatmap data: Global Fishing Watch (peer-reviewed, Science 2018). Cable data: TeleGeography. Live AIS: AISStream.io. Cartel intel: DEA National Drug Threat Assessment 2025, U.S. Treasury OFAC, U.S. State Department.
You are looking at where every vessel on earth operates — what they operate near — and what happens when they get too close.