Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) are a navigation safety device that transmits and monitors the location and characteristics of many vessels in U.S. and international waters in real-time. In the U.S. the Coast Guard and industry collect AIS data, which can also be used for a variety of coastal planning purposes. NOAA and BOEM have worked jointly to re-task and make available some of the most important records from the U.S. Coast Guard's national network of AIS receivers. This dataset represents annual vessel transit counts summarized at a 100 m by 100 m geographic area. A single transit is counted each time a vessel track passes through, starts, or stops within a 100 m grid cell.
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