Release Notes
April 2, 2026
- Launched the Vessel Position Layer, displaying the latest AIS-reported position of vessels worldwide
- Further improvements to the display settings for AIS data (Events, Vessel Positions, Tracks) with additional options created to display the new Vessel Position Layer by MMSI, vessel type, speed over ground, latest update, time of day, and associations with recent Skylight events
- Added a “spotlight” effect when selecting an Area of Interest to facilitate analysis within the selected zone
February 9, 2026
- Introduction of a larger map view on the Vessel Details Page to facilitate Vessel of Interest analysis
- Map tools added to the Vessel Details Page — ruler, map layers, Areas of Interest, and Show all AIS tracks
- Deep link added to the IMCS Network’s Combined Regional Authorised Vessels (CRAVT) tool to facilitate access to the latest vessel authorisation data from RFMOs and RFBs
December 9, 2025
- New menu for Areas of Interest (AoI) with an improved workflow to set up saved filters and alerts with complex filtering options
- Improved menu for filters (vessel information and vessel detections)
October 29, 2025
- Added vessel detections processing for River Congo (up to Liranga)
October 8, 2025
- Launched the Skylight Public Map
- Launched the new Skylight User Interface
- Added a feature to toggle on/off satellite frames
- Added a feature to display Skylight Events by vessel flag
September 15, 2025
- Improved generation of Entry Events, now recorded based on the effective speed calculated from AIS position messages (as opposed to reported speed) to filter out AIS anomalies.
June 13, 2025
- Added deep link to SkyTruth Cerulean on the vessel details page for vessels potentially associated with oil slick, as indicated by Cerulean.
June 2, 2025
- The GFW vessel filters from May 28 release integrated with Saved Filters
- Added estimated attributes for Sentinel-2 vessel detections (Estimated Length, Speed, Heading, Type)
- Added filter for estimated length on Commercial Optical and Sentinel-2 imagery
May 28, 2025
- Integrated the Global Fishing Watch (GFW) Vessel API such that:
- It is possible to filter events on Gear Type, Authorization Lists, Owner Name, and Owner Flag
- The GFW data on the Vessel Details Page references this API (data refreshed every week)
- Updated event details cards to show when AIS and GFW data differs
- Rounded coordinates & timestamps in downloaded event data
- Fixed French translations on vessel details page
- Fixed issue where Standard Rendezvous events would show up as “undefined - undefined” when the vessel name was not known
May 12, 2025
- Improvements to how Port Visits, Speed Range Events, and Entry Events are calculated so they are faster and more accurate.
May 1, 2025
- Unhid referral information to Global Fishing Watch from Skylight Vessel Details Page
April 24, 2025
- Re-running AIS correlation on satellite imagery every 3 hours (instead of once a day). This should cause un-correlated detections for which we later get AIS data to get correlated faster
April 21, 2025
- Started processing inland lakes
- Estimated lengths and heading for Sentinel-2 in production
January 24, 2025
- Create areas (AOIs) workflow improved in user interface
- Allow pasting MMSIs from Google Sheet into MMSI filter
- French localization updates
- New filters for vessel detections by satellite source
- Update tip & cue to save satellite tips in a database (no user impact)
- Updated how events are called from GraphQL API (no user impact)
December 12, 2024
- New vessel details page with event and track map including time slider
- Bug fix for users blocked from accepting terms and conditions
December 10, 2024
- Deprecated “in progress” event filter
November 27, 2024
- Rendezvous track color and border in baseball card match
- Fix bug where event icons appear overlayed on heatmap
November 20, 2024
- Added “Show All Tracks” feature
- Improved rendezvous generation for vessel-to-vessel events (reduce false positives from buoys)
- “My Skylight” menu updates
- Map tile loading progress indicator
November 4, 2024
- Optical Imagery from Landsat 8,9 now available in the KML network link
- Vessel type for SAR updated to “Search and Rescue”
- Other bug fixes
October 16, 2024
- Performance updates to reduce long load times (15% load time reduction)
October 10, 2024
- Updated Fishing Model under new architecture to greatly improve latency and accuracy.
September 27, 2024
- Vessel detection from Landsat 8/9 added.
September 12, 2024
- New GraphQL API documentation.
September 10, 2024
- Add 3rd VIIRS satellite (NOAA-21). And a total overhaul of the viirs pipeline to make it faster and more error resilient.
- Time slider added
- Improved track visualization, including updated legend
- Other bug fixes
Was this article helpful?