WakeAtlas changelog
Features, data additions and corrections, reconstructed from development handovers and release records. Older work is grouped into documented periods where an exact public release date was not retained. Counts describe the release at that time.
Data coverage and freshness vary by source. Source licences remain separate, and WakeAtlas is for exploration and research, not navigation. Unreleased experiments are excluded.
30 September 2026 — ocean forecasts, controls and reliability
- Added global Copernicus Marine currents with direction arrows, sea-surface height, temperature and salinity at selectable depths.
- Added significant wave height, direction and period, with separate primary and secondary swell. Wave controls advance in three-hour steps; direction labels distinguish where waves come from.
- Grouped Copernicus products under a single heading in Ocean science, with point inspection, dated frames, units and source information.
- Enabled six-hour automatic refresh for the seven new map types. Complete updates are validated before publication; a failed refresh keeps the last good dataset available.
- Organised layer controls into Ships & charts, Weather and Ocean science. The layer window can be moved, resized and reset; signed-in layouts save to the account, while guest layouts save in the browser.
- Removed duplicate quick weather switches from the settings panel and made satellite acquisition footprints off by default.
- Corrected AIS cache catch-up so a large queue of ship updates is processed in bounded batches instead of triggering repeated full-catalogue reloads. Replacement public API workers wait for their cache before accepting requests; failures now record diagnostic details.
29 September 2026 — science transparency and a larger wreck catalogue
- Expanded the live wreck catalogue to 50,140 records, including unidentified charted wrecks and approximate heritage locations; this is not a count of independently identified ships.
- Added 21,709 unnamed ADMIRALTY records, 440 Western Australian Museum records, 7,088 NOAA ENC point records and 698 MaSS records. Sixteen profiles gained MaSS material. Ambiguous identities and possible duplicate additions remain held for review.
- Changed wreck rendering to create markers for the visible area and grouped markers at wider views. The full catalogue remains searchable, with selected and directly linked wrecks retained.
- Reduced the initial wreck-profile page payload by loading supporting catalogue material separately. Existing photographs, histories and INFOMAR scans were preserved.
- Added separately attributed history to Soesterberg and explained conflicting source particulars.
- Added clearer observation/model badges and “What the data labels mean,” with examples tied to actual layers.
- Expanded per-layer information panels with available sources, citations or DOI, nominal resolution, dates, refresh information and uncertainty. Missing provider details remain explicitly unavailable.
- Argo profiles now expose original quality flags and supplied adjusted errors, distinguish observation, provider-update and retrieval times, and explain excluded readings.
- Added saved-date controls for available density, heatwave and sea-ice archives. These show actual retained dates rather than implying continuous historical coverage.
- Added Denmark’s 2024 depth model with depth, survey-year and source views, attribution and vertical-datum information.
- Added matching NASA PACE and CYGNSS information panels and corrected delivery of newly refreshed satellite images.
- Added the provider’s total sea-ice uncertainty for both hemispheres where collected. Older dates without uncertainty remain unavailable.
- Improved coordinate-inspector error handling so failed weather readings do not remain indefinitely labelled Loading.
28 September 2026 — ADMIRALTY wreck histories
- Expanded the catalogue from 7,361 to 20,205 records with 12,844 screened named ADMIRALTY additions.
- Enriched 1,064 existing profiles from 1,066 matched UKHO source records, preserving earlier research and imagery.
- Added available cargo, dimensions, sinking details, depths and full survey notes from the text export, retaining material truncated in the shapefile.
- Loaded long survey narratives when opening a profile rather than adding them to every globe startup. Conflicting dates, uncertain identities and possible duplicate additions were held back.
27 September 2026 — wreck scans, AIS coverage and help
- Added and enriched INFOMAR wreck records with survey dimensions, depth, information sheets and 3D-model links. Downloaded and validated 570 unique scan files; 376 profiles gained locally stored survey scans.
- Added Open Waters, Pelyr and OpenSeaFeed AIS integrations, extending received regional coverage. Coverage still depends on actual incoming reports.
- Added searchable nearby-vessel pages linked from port reports, with distance, report age and source filtering.
- Added optional pointer help for ship selection and the coordinate inspector, with a remembered on/off setting.
- Corrected Sentinel-1 catalogue pagination beyond the first 50 records. These remain acquisition footprints, not detected vessels.
- Added dated Global Fishing Watch refresh staging and validation, retaining the previous published snapshot when a complete refresh cannot be produced.
- Corrected a Fishing Watch transaction that blocked database cleanup, and removed repeated expensive database fallback scans while the AIS cache recovers.
- Corrected historical research status wording and the Association’s sinking year to 1707, keeping 1967 as its discovery year.
- Published six practical signed-in forum guides covering the map, AIS, nearby vessels, charts, science layers and accounts.
24–26 September 2026 — charts, forums and presentation
- Added the signed-in WakeAtlas forum with shared account access, email verification and moderation; improved existing-account sign-in and forum return links.
- Added Portuguese nautical charts with source credit and non-commercial licence information, and developed regional depth coverage including Spain and Canada where source data was available.
- Corrected Swedish tiled-imagery rendering and checked zoom and layer transitions.
- Added science and analysis shortcuts and clearer Hide/Show controls while retaining attribution and active globe state.
- Improved smaller-screen control overlap and text encoding.
- Expanded the reviewed wreck-video collection to 17 films across 14 wreck entries, including a verified Porto film; added a sourced Saint Sunniva history.
- Repaired Norwegian AIS recovery monitoring and NASA manifest freshness. Restricted the active-session counter to staff; a session count is not a count of unique people.
12–23 September 2026 — catalogue, charts and exploration
- Improved ship-catalogue caching and loading, imagery delivery and globe responsiveness through successive review passes.
- Extended regional nautical-chart and harbour-imagery coverage, including Dutch and New Zealand sources, with provider-specific attribution and coverage limits.
- Added NOAA ocean-exploration dive locations, dates, depths and original reports and video links.
- Added timestamped NOAA ROV recording playlists for 317 dives, comprising 29,247 segment references, with section selection and previous/next playback. Videos stream from NOAA; unavailable recordings retain labelled alternatives.
- Continued source-by-source wreck-history and imagery review. Unverified identities, images and unsupported claims were kept out of published profiles.
- Introduced two public API workers and compressed map responses, with shared protections for account limits and background jobs. This was a resilience improvement, not a claim of measured visitor capacity.
5–12 September 2026 — foundation and first public release
- Built the Cesium globe with received AIS positions, heading-aware symbols, visible-area queries, clustering, vessel search and source timestamps.
- Integrated AISStream, Fintraffic/Digitraffic and Kystverket/BarentsWatch feeds with reconnection handling, stored position history and provider metadata.
- Added vessel profiles, source-backed technical particulars and attributed imagery, plus port pages, nearby traffic and harbour reference features.
- Added recorded vessel tracks, replay controls, date/time selection and saved history bookmarks. Missing observations remain gaps rather than invented movements.
- Added private accounts, favourite vessels and ports, saved views, guest browser preferences and shared-list tools.
- Added weather and marine point readings, forecast comparisons, area sampling, buoy histories and weather context along recorded journeys.
- Added global wind-flow visualisation with forecast-time controls, speed shading and an explicit distinction between illustrative animation and measured trajectories.
- Added regional infrared satellite-weather imagery, separate satellite-source choices, lightning, tropical-cyclone context and stored warnings.
- Added GEBCO and regional bathymetry lookups with source provenance, nautical charts, a labelled-map background and detailed coastal/port imagery.
- Added Copernicus ocean chemistry, Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice concentration and change views, water-density maps, and Argo profiles with source-aware scientific presentation.
- Added offshore energy facilities, subsea and coastal infrastructure references, proximity context and source-grounded maritime research tools.
- Expanded stored US port imagery and improved tile caching so viewing saved areas does not repeatedly query the original imagery provider.
- Added loading and retry states, clearer dates, image fallbacks, keyboard and smaller-screen usability improvements, and safeguards against impossible AIS position jumps.
- Released public globe chat, member private messages, staff badges and Ask WakeAtlas guidance, alongside the free public explorer.