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Submarine Cable Status

AIS receivers

Cable ship positions come from radio receivers on land that hear ships’ AIS broadcasts. Coverage is patchy far from cities, around Australia above all. If you run a receiver, you can send what it hears here too, credited on the site.

Receivers sharing with us

None yet. Yours could be the first.

Each position on a ship’s page and the map says which receiver heard it.

How it works

  • • Keep feeding everyone else. This is one more output alongside MarineTraffic, VesselFinder, aprs.fi or whoever you send to now.
  • • Only cable ships are kept. We follow about 60 cable-laying and repair ships; everything else your receiver hears is thrown away as it arrives.
  • • Credited by name (or anonymously, if you prefer), with a link to your site if you have one. Your exact location is never shown.
  • • Checked: a position no ship could reach in the time is refused.
  • • Approved by hand: offer your receiver below and we’ll email you a key, usually within a few days.

Setting it up

With AIS-catcher (version 0.29 or later), add this to its command line, with the key we send you:

-H https://submarinecablestatus.com/api/v1/feed/YOUR-KEY gzip on interval 30 response off
  • • If it says gzip isn’t available, leave out gzip on.
  • • Rather not have the key in the address? Use -H https://submarinecablestatus.com/api/v1/feed userpwd receiver:YOUR-KEY instead.
  • • Any of its protocols works except APRS: the default, MINIMAL, LIST or NMEA.

Other software works too if it can POST NMEA sentences (!AIVDM…, one per line) or AIS-catcher’s JSON to https://submarinecablestatus.com/api/v1/feed/YOUR-KEY, plain or gzipped, every 10 seconds or more. Our answer says how many positions of our ships each post had.

Offer your receiver

The terms

  • • You send what your own receiver hears. We keep only positions of the cable ships we follow; everything else is thrown away as it arrives.
  • • Positions you send can be shown on this site and reused by others under CC BY 4.0, credited to your receiver by the name you give (or anonymously, if you prefer).
  • • We never show where your receiver is beyond the area you type, and your email is only used about your receiver.
  • • Either side can stop at any time: stop sending, or ask us to switch your key off. Positions already shown stay, with their credit.

How we handle your email: Terms and privacy.