AIS data is locked behind paywalls. OceanScrape is a scraper built to break that monopoly.
AIS data should not be a luxury product.
Every week, people in maritime, OSINT, GIS, logistics, and data communities ask the same question:
Where can I get vessel movement data?
Most of those questions die unanswered.
If someone replies at all, it is usually a commercial provider, a crippled API, a usage limit, or another polite way of saying: pay up or stay blind.
That is the problem OceanScrape exists to attack.
OceanScrape is a self hosted maritime data scraper. It captures publicly visible vessel markers from live map views, detects them with computer vision, projects them back into coordinates, writes raw JSONL, ingests into PostgreSQL, and serves the result through a dashboard and API.
Yes, it is a scraper.
That is the point.
The maritime data market has become a toll booth built on visibility that should never have been monopolized in the first place. OceanScrape does not politely ask that gate to open. It builds another route.
It has already been hit with a C&D once.
Good.
That tells me it is pressing on the correct nerve.
Global vessel movement matters. It touches sanctions, war, illegal fishing, energy, insurance, trade, climate research, ports, supply chains, and public accountability. This data should not be available only to companies that can afford enterprise access.
OceanScrape is raw. It is technical. It needs better adapters, more testing, better documentation, and more people willing to treat maritime transparency as a public interest problem instead of a premium feature.
But it exists, and it works.
If you are tired of seeing AIS requests disappear into silence, fork it, test it, break it, improve it, or argue with it.
Repo:
https://github.com/theSchaefer/OceanScrape
Maritime data does not belong in a vault. It belongs in the hands of people who can use it to see what is actually happening at sea.
