Ghost Fleet

The problem

A retired database, read the way it was written

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey kept a database of charted wrecks and obstructions, then retired it. The records are still public and still useful, but reading them right is where the time goes: one field holds both a ship’s name and a category word, depth comes in three units, and the survey history stops at 254 characters.

Watch it work

Episode 14 — Ghost Fleet (5:49)

One public source end to end: where the wreck records live, the three details that cost the most time, and the map and 3D dive they turn into.

What it covers

One source, three details, one map

• The source: AWOIS, the Automated Wreck and Obstruction Information System of NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey. Each record has a vessel name or type, a position and a rating of how good that position is, a chart number, a depth when one was measured, and a survey history. NOAA has stopped updating the database and has retired the service; for current charted wrecks it points to its Electronic Navigational Charts and the ENC Direct to GIS application. Ghost Fleet ships a dated copy of the 12,660 records with the app, read on September 28, 2026.
• Detail one, one field is both name and category: 6,402 records say OBSTRUCTION, 3,608 say UNKNOWN, and 2,416 carry a vessel name. There is no separate field for the type of feature, so Ghost Fleet sorts the points with a short Arcade expression: obstruction is amber, and everything else is a wreck.
• Detail two, depth comes in three units: 8,345 of the 12,660 records have no sounding type recorded. Of the rest, 3,336 are in feet, 688 in meters and 262 in fathoms. A depth of zero is treated as not charted, and the depth filter converts every record to feet inside the query itself — meters times about 3.28, fathoms times 6.
• Detail three, the history stops at 254 characters: 3,543 records reach that limit, so their history stops in the middle of a sentence. The record for the battleship USS Virginia, sunk in 1923, is one of them, and the text is kept as the surveyors wrote it: the name is spelled VIRGINA, so a search for Virginia does not return it.
• How it becomes a map: wrecks are pale cyan circles and obstructions amber diamonds; a chip counts the records that match every filter; one search box reads vessel names and survey histories together; Has recorded story keeps only real narratives; a depth slider limits the map to a charted depth range; a density view shows where the records crowd; ten notable wrecks fly to their cards; and a 3D view puts the points on the real seafloor, with eight dive sites and a translucent hull marking each wreck in range.

What it does not do

• Not for navigation — this is a dated copy of a retired historical database. For current charted wrecks, use NOAA’s Electronic Navigational Charts.
• Not a model of any ship — the 3D hull is a symbol for a wreck in range, not that vessel’s shape.
• Not an official NOAA product — the records are NOAA’s; the map and the app are All Things Spatial’s.

Where the data comes from

Every source in the episode

• NOAA Office of Coast Survey, Wrecks and Obstructions (AWOIS) — nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/data/wrecks-and-obstructions.html
• NOAA ENC Direct to GIS, current charted features — nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/learn/encdirect/
• Esri Oceans basemap and world elevation with seafloor depths (3D) — esri.com
• Source sheet with every endpoint — allthingsspatial.io/pages/sources.html

The records are the work of a United States agency and are in the public domain. The credit sits in the Ghost Fleet footer: NOAA Office of Coast Survey, AWOIS, with the snapshot date, and Esri for the basemap.