Monitoring vessel traffic along the Northern Sea Route

To display the map correctly, we recommend opening the page from a computer.

Each point on the map is a ship at a specific point in time. Click on it and you will find out its name, type, country of registration and how many hours it spent in this place.

The map covers three years - from 2023 to 2025 - and allows you to compare how traffic on the NSR has changed. The flag filter shows which countries' ships appeared on the route. To study any vessel in detail, you can go directly to Global Fishing Watch and view its full route.

Filters:

• Old tankers.
  
  We have identified oil tankers older than 15 years. Vessels of this age wear out, break down more often and are less suitable for navigation in the difficult ice conditions of the Northern Sea Route. At the same time, eliminating the consequences of an oil spill in these waters is extremely difficult: the remoteness of the route, lack of infrastructure and harsh climate make any accident potentially catastrophic.
  

• Sanctioned ships.
  
  The presence of such ships on the NSR suggests that the route is increasingly being used in opaque schemes for transporting goods (primarily oil).
  
  The map also shows the boundaries of specially protected natural areas along the NSR. It is possible to study when and what ships entered these zones, despite their special status and restrictions on navigation. We have collected a set of such intersections into a dataset, which can be downloaded from the link in the description when you first open the map.

Data aggregated from Global Fishing Watch . Sanctions lists are from OpenSanctions , ice and geographic data are from NSIDC .

Cover photo: Rosatom