Satellite ship tracking: VesselFinder maps (Bay of Biscay)

🛰️ Satellite vessel tracking, VesselFinder maps

These maps come from VesselFinder, which combines land-based AIS receivers withsatellite AIS. They cover the coast as well as the open ocean.

🗺️ Bay of Biscay, all vessels

An overview of traffic, satellite coverage included: it also shows the open sea, where land-based AIS receivers do not reach.

This map is provided by VesselFinder.com. By displaying it, you accept that this third-party service may set cookies and receive your IP address.

🔌 Cable ship PRYSMIAN MONNA LISA

Italian cable ship (MMSI 247415600) at work offshore from Capbreton. The track of the last 24 hours is shown.

This map is provided by VesselFinder.com. By displaying it, you accept that this third-party service may set cookies and receive your IP address.

🔌 Cable ship PRYS_LEONAR_DA_VINCI

Sister ship of the previous vessel (MMSI 247415300), on the same works off the Landes coast. Track of the last 24 hours.

This map is provided by VesselFinder.com. By displaying it, you accept that this third-party service may set cookies and receive your IP address.

ℹ️ These maps are displayed from VesselFinder: the positions stay with them, cetace.info does not record them.
Maps and position data: VesselFinder.com (free embed widget).

This page presents the official VesselFinder maps, which incorporate satellite AIS: they make it possible to follow ships out to the open ocean, beyond the reach of coastal AIS stations alone.

The cable-laying operation off the Landes coast

Two Italian cable layers, the Prysmian Monna Lisa and the Prys Leonar Da Vinci, have been working for several weeks off Capbreton and Mimizan. Almost stationary and signalling “restricted manoeuvrability”, they are laying a submarine cable in an area frequented by cetaceans.

This work illustrates a pressure that is little seen but real: underwater noise and the reworking of the seabed. Noise is recognised as a major disturbance for cetaceans, which depend on sound to find their way, hunt and communicate; see our pages on ocean noise and echolocation.

These two vessels do not appear on our own AIS map: they are in an area (the Landes coast) that no shared land-based AIS receiver reaches. Only VesselFinder’s satellite coverage picks them up, which is the point of this second map.

Going further

Cross this traffic with the environment and the fauna: fishing and ship strikes in the bay, plankton and temperature by satellite, cetacean sightings.