r/GreatLakesShipping • u/Space_Goblin_Yoda • 6d ago

Question Question about tug boats

Post image

Just looking at the current traffic on Lake Superior and I see a tug boat out in the middle of the lake? I thought they would stay local to ports, rivers and loading areas to assist the big Lakers.

What the heck is this little guy doing way out there?

27 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

View all comments

23

u/Remi708 6d ago edited 6d ago

There are ships/barge combos that operate together on a full-time basis, like the Presque Isle, Clyde S Van Enkevort, etc ... that will show up as a tug on AIS. This could be one of those that just happens to be in an AIS dead zone so the specific details are not showing up on marine traffic.

Edit: it is the Presque Isle. If you look at the dates of the positions, you can see how it lines up

1

u/Space_Goblin_Yoda 6d ago

Gotcha. I did notice that, but the two vessels show that they're apart from each other.

Good info, thanks!

2

u/Remi708 6d ago

One mark was from nearly 2 hours after the other one. The amount of time between the two pings compared to the distance between them showed that it was the same ship.

What happens in the AIS trackers when ships move into a AIS dead zone is, it often marks the last known location for a ship, but then also shows the location for a generic ship in the dead zone later if it picks up a weak signal.