On Thursday 21 October 2021 the queue for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach reached a record. The Marine Exchange of Southern California counted 79 container ships waiting at anchor or in holding areas, and 109 vessels at anchor in all. Before the pandemic about 17 ships lay at anchor on a normal day. This video shows 24 hours of AIS around that day, from Wednesday evening to Thursday afternoon Pacific time, the position reports ships send by radio. Every cargo ship and tanker over 150 m is drawn as a ship, coloured by what it is doing: at anchor in San Pedro Bay, drifting in the holding areas further offshore, at a berth in port, or under way. Grey dots are all other vessels. The small map zooms in on San Pedro Bay. The anchorages off Long Beach fill up first. The ships that do not fit drift slowly in holding areas, some beyond Santa Catalina Island, and their tracks draw loops and lines as wind and current push them around. Ships at the berths are worked around the clock, while the number of large ships waiting outside stays between about 55 and 75 all day. The counts in the video are our own, from the AIS positions, for ships over 150 m inside the map. They differ from the Marine Exchange count, which covers all ship types within 40 miles of the port.
Source: AIS data: U.S. Coast Guard, via NOAA Office for Coastal Management (MarineCadastre.gov), one position per ship every 4 minutes. Queue figures: Marine Exchange of Southern California. Coastline: GSHHG. Visualisation by The Moving Sea
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