The Invisible Highways of the Sea

The science

Roughly 90% of world trade travels by sea, yet the routes those ships follow are invisible to most of us. The data behind this print comes from a major study of cumulative human impacts on the ocean, led by Benjamin Halpern and colleagues at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. One layer of that work maps commercial shipping intensity, reconstructed from the signals that vessels broadcast continuously during their voyages.

Every large ship transmits its position through the Automatic Identification System – a safety transponder required on cargo vessels, tankers and passenger ships. Aggregate those signals across the global fleet and the ocean fills with lanes: the trade arteries that keep the modern economy running.

How we turned it into a print

Drawing the shipping lanes alone, we found the same thing happens as with our flight routes map: the continents appear in negative, outlined by the traffic that hugs their coasts. The great chokepoints stand out – Suez, Panama, the Strait of Malacca, the English Channel – and the main ports glow where lanes converge. It is a portrait of globalization drawn entirely on water.

The shipping industry also carries an environmental cost, in air, water, noise and oil pollution – a tension the map quietly holds.

The print

The World as Shipping Routes belongs to our Minimal collection and the Maps for Travel Lovers collection, printed on premium paper in 70x50 cm and 100x70 cm. Data source: Halpern et al., cumulative human impacts raw stressor data, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.