Marine Ports & Services Data for Journalists, Academics & Students

Nine of the ten carry this persona's maximum relevance rating of 3; the exception, VT Explorer AIS, sits at relevance 2 and drops to tenth despite a quality 7 score. The complete inventory sits in our marine-ports-services data hub.

Government and multilateral publishers dominate: seven of these ten records come from federal agencies or the World Bank, echoing a catalog in which 781 of 1,744 datasets (44.8%) are public datasets. BTS and USACE jointly maintain the federal port register and the commerce series; CBP publishes its own directory of 328 ports of entry across 56 state and territory indexes; NOAA operates the PORTS network of 43 installations at major U.S. ports.

Provenance checks out at record level, which is what a methods reviewer asks for. World Bank figures resolve to indicator codes with a stated underlying source (UNCTAD), CBP pages stamp their own Last Modified date, and every USACE release declares its data years - 2002 through 2024. Natural Earth is the independent exception: a volunteer-built public-domain layer whose 1:10m scale and lineage are documented beside the ~51 KB download.

Two sources move in real time: NOAA CO-OPS streams 6-minute water levels, tide predictions and currents without a key, and VT Explorer tracks 300,000+ vessels daily. The federal annual cycle is nearly as fresh - BTS's atlas was updated in July 2026 carrying calendar-year 2023 tonnage, and USACE publishes through data year 2024.

Watch the tails before charting a trend: the Liner Shipping Connectivity Index ends at 2021 and the WEF port-infrastructure score at 2017, so neither supports a current-year claim. Static directories age gracefully because CBP stamps each of its 328 port pages with its own Last Modified date, letting you cite the currency of the exact record you used.

Lead with the publisher and program, then pin the vintage. Federal sources want program name and data year, such as USACE Waterborne Commerce data year 2023 or the July 2026 edition of the National Transportation Atlas Database.

Bulk formats earn their place in a methods appendix: downloading the CSV, GeoJSON or file geodatabase lets you archive the exact file behind a printed figure, and NOAA's API lets you reproduce any tide number on demand.