WatchMate Reviews

Vessel tracking built for teams, not for one-off ship lookups. BigOceanData is a UK-based commercial vessel tracking and maritime intelligence platform, used by fleet operators and ship owners, marine insurers and risk managers, maritime security providers, port and terminal operators, fisheries and environmental bodies, and government organisations to monitor fleets and regions from one shared workspace. Around 80 million position reports are processed each day, covering more than 450,000 vessels and 4,500 ports. Terrestrial AIS and satellite AIS are combined with independent position sources such as Inmarsat-C, Iridium and onboard devices, all feeding a single pipeline rather than a separate system. This is what makes AIS Continuity possible: when a transponder is switched off, jammed, or simply out of coverage, the vessel does not vanish from the picture. Every position keeps a record of which source it came from. Alongside real-time and historical tracking, the platform provides voyage replay, configurable geofencing and alerts around ports, terminals, anchorages and offshore assets, port activity monitoring, vessel risk assessment against historic piracy data, and an integrated Ship Security Alert System. Route optimisation, powered by ABB Ability Vessel Routing, plans against time, fuel, cost, ETA and safety thresholds rather than distance alone, with route comparison, ship-to-shore route exchange and re-optimisation when conditions change. Because it sits in the same platform as live tracking, planned routes and actual positions are visible together. Over 200 organisations use BigOceanData worldwide, Maersk, Kuehne+Nagel and Crisis24 among them, and 96% renew. Pricing is published rather than quote-only, from $189 per month.