Live Ships In Area
live_ships_in_areaLive ship positions right now in a geographic area, from AIS radio broadcasts — what vessels are sailing near a port, coastline, strait or set of coordinates at this moment. Returns each vessel heard with its position, speed, course, navigational status, type, destination and IMO where broadcast, plus a breakdown by vessel type (cargo, tanker, passenger, fishing, tug). Give either a centre point (latitude + longitude + radius_km) or a bounding box. COVERAGE IS PARTIAL AND TERRESTRIAL — there is no receiver coverage in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman or Red Sea, so this tool cannot answer questions about those waters (use chokepoint_status for Hormuz/Suez/Bab el-Mandeb transit counts instead). Counts are vessels heard during a listening window of a few seconds, not a complete count of vessels present.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| east | No | Bounding box eastern longitude | |
| west | No | Bounding box western longitude | |
| limit | No | Maximum vessels to return (default 50, max 300) | |
| north | No | Bounding box northern latitude | |
| south | No | Bounding box southern latitude (alternative to centre+radius) | |
| _apiKey | No | aisstream.io API key (free at aisstream.io) | |
| latitude | No | Centre latitude, e.g. 43.3 for Marseille | |
| longitude | No | Centre longitude, e.g. 5.4 for Marseille | |
| radius_km | No | Radius around the centre point in km (default 50, max 500) | |
| ship_type | No | Optional filter on decoded type, e.g. "tanker", "cargo", "passenger", "fishing", "tug" | |
| window_seconds | No | How long to listen, 3-25 seconds (default 12). Longer windows hear more vessels, especially anchored ones which only transmit every ~3 minutes. |