[HN Gopher] Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?
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Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?
I built this because I was interested in the data. Didn't fully get
it to what I wanted, but thought I'd share it nonetheless. Maybe
someone has better data sources they could share! Turns out live
ship tracking APIs are expensive so I manually just copied the json
from
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:57.4/cente...
I'll probably have an ai agent do the same thing on some cron
interval, if this gets any fanfare. To actually know if the port
is open without live ship tracking I found
https://portwatch.imf.org/pages/cb5856222a5b4105adc6ee7e880a...
which was perfect, except it has 4 day lag! I also thought of
adding news feed parsing or prediction market data to get a more
definitive answer on if it's open right when you load it, but I
spent a few hours and am gonna move on for now.
Author : anonfunction
Score : 141 points
Date : 2026-04-08 21:33 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ishormuzopenyet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ishormuzopenyet.com)
| fraywing wrote:
| Very cool, thanks for sharing!
|
| What's the threshold function? Do you have graduating `No -->
| Partially --> Mostly --> Open`?
|
| Also what's the update cadence?
| anonfunction wrote:
| So if it's under 25% of the prior year's crossing it goes to
| NO, otherwise it's counted as open.
|
| The update cadence kinda sucks because I didn't spring for the
| $200 a month live ship tracking data, so I'm using
| https://portwatch.imf.org/pages/cb5856222a5b4105adc6ee7e880a...
| which lags by 4 days which isn't great for a site like this,
| but was fine for me on a little side project. Open to other
| data sources or ideas, of if anyone wants to sponsor an API key
| (I did reach out to a few vendors already if they would give
| the project api key in exchange for a link to their site).
|
| The original idea was to track ships and see how many crossed
| the strait but as mentioned above I didn't find any free
| sources so I went with what I did.
| truelson wrote:
| Really liked this. Made me laugh even if not intentionally funny.
|
| Also, given how markets and news cycles are moved with words not
| actions these days, I really like this site.
|
| There are still so many misaligned interests; this is a much
| tougher situation that may get some local stability for a period,
| but will likely return to chaos again.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| You might want to rethink scraping marinetraffic before you get a
| call from their lawyers?
|
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/p/terms
| anonfunction wrote:
| Fair enough, I'm actually not scraping it on any automated
| cycle currently, I just manually copied the JSON from their
| site to get some ships on the map.
|
| There's a few live ship tracking APIs I considered but they are
| expensive or their free offering just straight up didn't work.
| I sent a few an email if they would consider sponsoring the
| project, no replies yet. - AISStream.io --
| https://aisstream.io -- Down/not working - DataDocked
| -- https://datadocked.com -- Ran out of credits on a single
| failed request - VesselFinder --
| https://www.vesselfinder.com/realtime-ais-data -- Enterprise
| contact form, asked if they wanted to sponsor in exchange for a
| link - MarineTraffic -- https://www.marinetraffic.com,
| their API is like an enterprise contact form, same as above,
| waiting for response.
| frogperson wrote:
| https://warescalation.com/ is also a good source of info.
| starik36 wrote:
| It says US-Israel Bloc military deaths - 74. Iran military
| deaths - 10,500 It has no information what is the source of
| information. Seems like made up numbers.
| bl4ckneon wrote:
| Very cool! I love one off intresting sites like this. Thanks for
| building it and talking a little bit about where the data comes
| from etc.
|
| On the note of Ai agent getting the data for you, could you not
| just build a chrome extention that intercepts/read the api
| response and then uploads it to whatever ingest endpoint you
| have? You could probably just call their api end points they use
| on the page as well but not sure what protections they have so
| might be a bit tricky. A custom chrome extention could do it
| though if they have protections.
| anonfunction wrote:
| Their APIs are protected by cloudflare, I didn't want to
| circumvent that. Also I dont really want to make a chrome
| extension or have a browster tab open, if that's what you
| meant? I've already made a cron style agent framework[1] so
| that's what I'd probably reach for since they can actually open
| the browser and inspect the network traffic to grab the json.
|
| 1. https://botctl.dev/
| Klonoar wrote:
| How is doing it via agent not circumventing it?
| anonfunction wrote:
| I think I was just spit-balling what would be possible,
| rather than what I intend to do. As mentioned elsewhere I'm
| hoping to get an API key from one the data providers, I
| even reached out to the api behind marinetraffic.com,
| https://www.kpler.com/product/maritime/data-services to see
| if they would sponsor the project.
|
| This was just something I built on a whim, but I appreciate
| your comment and took it to heart!
| ggm wrote:
| Maps can be so misleading. It looks like a dredging operation in
| Omani waters could alleviate this, if we'd started decades ago.
|
| Moving to a topographic view, it becomes clear the neck of land
| at "two seas view" is narrow, but tall. It would literally be
| moving a mountain.
|
| Panamax and suezmax boats are smaller than ULCC supertankers.
|
| Ferdinand De Lesseps time has passed. This would be ruinously
| expensive. Better to negotiate with rational intent.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > This would be ruinously expensive.
|
| I bet it could have been done with the money spent on the "war"
| ggm wrote:
| Yes, but in circumstances where no war is in the offing,
| digging a giant hole next to 50km of open water begs
| questions. It would be impossible to get "it's a hedge
| against the future" over the line.
|
| The same to a lesser extent applies to pipes. You could
| construct pipes for gas, for some of the heavier oils and
| crude (what I read suggests pumping crude long distance is
| painful, it has to be down-mixed with lighter stuff to make
| it sufficiently fluid) but the fertilizer? that would mean
| converting dry to wet and back again (nobody ships fluid
| weight if they can avoid it) -Or ship the inputs: ammonia,
| and sulphur in some liquid form, and produce the dry goods on
| the other side.
|
| But, I think pipes have a stronger case than a canal: move
| the things which are amenable to pipes, into pipes, and bury
| the pipes.
|
| In times past, this would have been done as a convoy. China
| and other nations would have stepped to the fore, conducting
| safe passage with their own ships on the outside edge. But
| we're not in a world where this kind of thing works for
| anyone involved. Even offering to cover insurance risk
| doesn't look to have motivated ship owners to pass. (in times
| past, the US wouldn't have put itself or it's allies in this
| position, hence the reference to China)
|
| Don't be fooled by mental images of what a convoy looks like:
| ships like these maintain massive separation. There's almost
| suction between hulls moving at this scale, if they were
| within 500m of each other there'd be chaos if one had to take
| any evasive action. In reality (I believe) even a convoy
| consists of a a lot of discrete, clearly demarked and
| targetable things, not a large mass you can "hide" in.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_traffic_separation_sch.
| .. (and a lot of links off this)
| analog31 wrote:
| We could have spent the money on windmills without raising
| any suspicions.
|
| On the other hand, fertilizer is fluid -- either ammonia or
| ureal ammonium nitrate.
| ggm wrote:
| If the fertiliser production has a point in manufacture
| when the fluid is amenable to transport, then for sure,
| that would make sense.
|
| And you are right, if the same amount of capital and
| energy was invested in Solar/Wind as in Oil, we'd be in a
| totally different world. It's cents to dollars,
| considering the size of the tail AND the current
| investment.
|
| Here in Australia the problem is the royalty stream to
| the states. Oil and Gas windfalls when the price of
| equivalent supply (brent crude I believe for oil, not
| sure what LNG world price defines the limit) hits $100 is
| just amazing. The revenue stream to the states is
| enormous. Their motivation to transfer money into
| alternatives, instead of sucking on the teat, is zero.
| States without significant oil revenue seem to do more
| (SA) -States isolated from the national grid seem to do
| more (WA) but a site with both high insolation, and good
| wind, but also massive oil, gas and coal fields (Qld)
| does as little as possible. It's political reductionism.
| The crony economy is huge, Mining funds the government
| and the government reflects mining sector interests over
| all others.
| stavros wrote:
| I'm not really very up to speed on this, can someone explain how
| the strait is actually closed? Are the Iranians threatening to
| sink any ships that pass by, or what? How come any ships don't
| turn their transponders off and try to make a run for it?
| MattDamonSpace wrote:
| They'll sink ships or cause damage with low cost drones or
| missles
|
| The strait isn't wide enough, Iran can see any ships attempting
| stavros wrote:
| I see, thanks. Looks like the strait is 77 km wide, which
| isn't one ship's width but probably not wide enough that
| binoculars wouldn't see everything.
| cwillu wrote:
| The navigable width where it is deep enough is
| _significantly_ narrower.
| stavros wrote:
| Good point, thanks.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| From what I was reading Iran likely wouldn't sink a civilian
| vessel but because the risk is there due to the threat they
| don't do it because it would violate the contact for their
| maritime insurance, meaning even if you had a brave crew and
| orders to go, you lose all your insurance coverage against the
| loss if something goes wrong.
| roughly wrote:
| > How come any ships don't turn their transponders off and try
| to make a run for it?
|
| Because the cost of failure is death and the crew aren't going
| to risk it, and the other cost of failure is a couple hundred
| million dollars in ship and cargo and the insurance companies
| aren't going to risk it either. This is like asking why your
| DoorDash driver wouldn't just try to run the police blockade to
| get you your burrito.
| megous wrote:
| I'm sure tankers are huge and show up easily on naval radars.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| So apparently the reason they don't just go for it is due to
| insurance. Because Iran technically isn't suppose to just sink a
| civilian vessel, but the risk is there so the ships are ordered
| by the owner/stakeholder not to go due to the insurance coverage.
| Kind of interesting, they could technically call Iran's bluff but
| it would mean, they violate the insurance contract and lose
| coverage? I'm just reading about this so probably not the full
| picture.
| tokai wrote:
| No insurance has been fixed for a while now. Its as simple as
| shipowners not wanting to lose their boats and their future
| earnings potential.
| cwillu wrote:
| And their crews not wanting to lose their lives.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| The capability is very real. And they don't have to sink the
| ship, just one Shahed drone exploding on the deck and
| injuring/killing a sailor is deterrence enough.
| alerter wrote:
| I work for a consultancy that does vessel tracking as one of its
| main products, and yeah it's expensive! afaik they have remote
| teams with sensors at key points and a bunch of people using
| AI/software to manage things like GPS spoofing. So it's all
| pretty guarded proprietary stuff.
|
| Great bit of topical datavis here.
| anonfunction wrote:
| Yeah! The AIS terrain data is expensive, but the good stuff is
| from satellite tracking and out of my budget for silly site I
| built on a whim.
|
| https://i.imgflip.com/aopmmf.jpg
| dr_robert wrote:
| What did you use for the map ? Mapbox ??
| Doohickey-d wrote:
| Looks like it's using leaflet + map tiles from
| https://carto.com/
|
| I think Mapbox also provides a similar looking basemap style.
| anonfunction wrote:
| CartoDB and Leaflet. Source is available here btw:
| https://github.com/montanaflynn/ishormuzopenyet
| pietervdvn wrote:
| As an OpenStreetMap-contributor: you have to add attribution
| as per our license agreement:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
|
| CartoDB packages this data into tiles you can use, but that
| doesn't lift this requirement.
| MiSeRyDeee wrote:
| This will be inherently inaccurate because data was based on
| public AIS signal, but ships are turning off their AIS to avoid
| detection.
|
| > In an attempt to evade detection, many ships appear to be
| deliberately switching off their tracking system - known as AIS
| (Automatic Identification System).
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4geg0eeyjeo
| anonfunction wrote:
| Great point and something I didn't consider, I should make a
| big disclaimer it's not meant to be fully accurate or live
| data. Thanks for the comment!
| anonfunction wrote:
| Another funny thing about this was this morning I checked if the
| domain isthestraitofhormuzopenyet.com was available and it was,
| and by the time I made the site locally, put it on vercel I went
| to buy the domain to point DNS to it someone had bought it! I
| renamed it to the current site url / repo which i think might be
| a little nicer to type, but crazy that we had same idea on
| apparently the same day. I was also just telling a friend about
| simultaneous invention aka multiple discover[1] a few days ago,
| so another case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon[2]!
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
| soco wrote:
| I was also surprised to see that arewegreatyet.com is in use
| already...
| einpoklum wrote:
| Iran (and various news sources) have claimed that the straights
| are not now, and in fact never have been, closed - provided the
| relevant ship was not involved/linked to the attacks on Iran, and
| that it coordinated with Iranian authorities.
|
| So, it could be that:
|
| * Iran is lying and that has not actually been an option.
|
| * A lot of the ships which would otherwise have transitioned are
| involved with the war somehow.
|
| * The relevant parties have decided not to coordinate transitions
| with Iran, for various reasons
|
| * The data displayed at the link is partial for some reason.
| sethops1 wrote:
| No need for baseless speculation, it's well known that no
| insurance company is willing to insure transit through the
| straight while it's an active war zone.
| spaghetdefects wrote:
| It was mentioned in this thread and quickly flagged, but Israel
| broke the ceasefire today by attacking civilians in Lebanon so
| Iran closed the straight. It was open prior to the ceasefire
| violation.
|
| France's Macron actually just commented on this:
| https://x.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/2041990505760772551
| blobbers wrote:
| IRGC targeting systems have entered the chat.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| I think there's difference between A) whether ships are
| traversing the straight, and B) whether the straight is open /
| closed / could be traversed.
|
| It's very well possible that the straight is safe, but the
| vessels are unnecessarily cautious.
| anonfunction wrote:
| Totally, and I've heard a lot of it comes down to insurance!
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-08/shippers-...
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| The data being ~4 days delayed does kind of make this less
| useful. It is a nice concept and cool to see the historical data
| though. Just think the domain and the large "NO" doesn't really
| fit with the lack of current data.
| anonfunction wrote:
| Totally agree, I put some text and tried to make it clear. My
| first intention was to find some live ship tracking API and see
| how many ships cross the strait, but they were all hundreds of
| dollars a month, and behind enterprise contact forms.
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(page generated 2026-04-08 23:00 UTC)