There may be reasons if you can see a ship offshore which does not show on the map:

1)  There is no station currently monitoring the local traffic and reporting the details to the marine automatic identification system.  There are reporting stations close to Craster at Alnmouth or the RNLI lifeboat station in Seahouses.  If both of those stations are off air, the next receiving stations are near Berwick on Tweed to the North and Blyth to the South. We are close to the edge of the range from both locations so that vessels offshore at Craster are not always reported.

2)  The map will update whenever you go to the page but is then only updated every 10 minutes while the page remains focused.  During this time ships we typically see along this coast may travel 2 to 3 miles.  However, some browsers may not pick up the update correctly and you may need to manually refresh the page.

3)  If you can see a ship offshore which does not show on the map, you may be able to refresh the page to display the map correctly.  Otherwise the monitoring system may not have picked up the ship's current position.

4)  If there is a ship shown on the map which is not visible to the naked eye you can click on the ship to reveal a pop-up which shows how long it is since the ship's location was reported as well as details of the vessel, its destination and sometimes a photograph or two.  The ship may have moved on without its position being reported through the monitoring system.

To restore the map to its original size and position if you have used the zoom or clicked on a ship, refresh or reload the view or click on this link.

Below there is a selection of photographs we have collected over the years.  These photographs change each time the page is refreshed.  To see the full collection, please click here.