Mastodawn

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.

https://www.ishormuzopenyet.com/

MarineTraffic: Global Ship Tracking Intelligence | AIS Marine Traffic

MarineTraffic Live Ships Map. Discover information and vessel positions for vessels around the world. Search the MarineTraffic ships database of more than 550000 active and decommissioned vessels. Search for popular ships globally. Find locations of ports and ships using the near Real Time ships map. View vessel details and ship photos.

Jeremy1026 2d ago

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 2d ago

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.

Jeremy1026 2d ago

I've done some small scale ship tracking in the past, and yeah, anything beyond finding a specific ship while it is near the shore is stupid expensive.

anonfunction 2d ago

What do you think of adding prediction market data to the indication? So basically there's this:

https://polymarket.com/event/strait-of-hormuz-traffic-return...

My approach would be if that jumps up to 75%+ it would change to YES. And if we get into May they have one for then too:

https://polymarket.com/event/strait-of-hormuz-traffic-return...

You can actually see in the last 24 hours it jumped up with the ceasefire and Iran saying they would open it and fell back with reports it's been shut down again easlier today.

Edit: I added this, I can see a few downvotes, happy to discuss here or in the github repo if anyone has strong feelings on it!

Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by end of April?

$5,039,390 has traded on "Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to no..." as of April 9, 2026. View real-time odds or trade on The World's Largest Prediction Mark...

Polymarket

killingtime74 1d ago

i didnt downvote you but why wouldn't i just go to Polymarket directly for this

anonfunction 1d ago

I mean you obviously could, the url is a little harder to remember and it doesn't have crossing data. This was just a small fun project I did, so you're free to do whatever you like. The reason I thought of using polymarket data is I didn't have live ship tracking data which is what I originally intended to use.

elSidCampeador 2d ago

I believe NASA / EU provide daily satellite imagery for free (which is of relatively high quality too). I wonder if there's a way to take that data, and training some kind of image recognition model that figures out "movement" or something to the same end? Would be cool to see

anonfunction 2d ago

Funnily enough, I did find a few satellite sources at the beginning for the map background and noticed that all the ships seemed to be scrubbed from the image. It's an interesting idea, thanks for the comment!

The sources I used were:

- ESRI World Imagery[1] — free satellite tiles, high-res, but ships are stripped out from the imagery

- NASA GIBS - VIIRS[2] — near real-time daily satellite imagery from NASA, but resolution is ~375m so ships aren't visible anyway

- Mapbox Satellite[3] — high-res and looks great, but same deal — ships are scrubbed from the composited imagery

1. https://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_I...
2. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/engage/open-data-services-softwar...
3. https://www.mapbox.com

World_Imagery (MapServer)

Ai2 has vessel detection models for Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 (ESA) along with Landsat 8, Landsat 9, and VIIRS (NASA/USGS/NOAA):

- Sentinel-2: https://github.com/allenai/rslearn_projects/blob/master/docs...

- Landsat: https://github.com/allenai/rslearn_projects/blob/master/docs...

- VIIRS: https://github.com/allenai/vessel-detection-viirs

I think you can see these vessel detections at https://app.skylight.earth/ ("Try out a limited version as a guest") but they seem to be delayed by 48 hours.

rslearn_projects/docs/sentinel2_vessels.md at master · allenai/rslearn_projects

Contribute to allenai/rslearn_projects development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

namewithhe1d 2d ago

OP, DM me and I'll get you a persistent key for this data. Not from MarineTraffic

anonfunction 1d ago

Wow thanks, there's not really any dm functionality on hn and I didn't see a clear social handle in your profile. https://github.com/montanaflynn/ has my email.

montanaflynn - Overview

Distributed systems engineer. montanaflynn has 269 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

GitHub

HiroProtagonist 1d ago

Very cool thing of you to do.

nodesocket 1d ago

Aren't ships turning off their AIS when traveling the straight? I think https://atlas.flexport.com/ could also be a good source.

foresterre 1d ago

According to the Financial Times (1), the straight is "open" but Iran is extorting fees for passing ships.

> "Iran will demand that shipping companies pay tolls in cryptocurrency for oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, as it seeks to retain control over passage through the key waterway during the two-week ceasefire."

If they really will start doing so for all shipping, that would be odd since the straight itself is in Oman's territorial waters. Even so, the UNCLOS convention (2) requires free transit:

> Article 44
> Duties of States bordering straits
>
> States bordering straits shall not hamper transit passage and shall give appropriate publicity to any danger to navigation or overflight within or over the strait of which they have knowledge. There shall be no suspension of transit passage.

It would be unprecedented and unlawful, but I guess previous actions of Israel, the US and Iran have shown our world is beyond adhering to laws and agreements now.

(1) https://www.ft.com/content/02aefac4-ea62-48db-9326-c0da373b1...
(2) United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea: https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...

Iran demands crypto fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

Country’s oil exporters’ union says toll to be paid in cryptocurrency and vessels monitored for weapons

Financial Times

femiagbabiaka 1d ago

Oman and Iran are splitting the fees RE: the statements by Iran.

AnimalMuppet 1d ago

But collected by Iran, not by Oman. Which is weird, if it's really Oman's territorial waters.

FrustratedMonky 1d ago

And Trump.

Didn't Trump float the Idea of a joint venture with Iran on the Fees?

Amazing, that once you could make money on a toll, Trump was "there is profit in peace? lets get this peace thing going"

anonfunction 1d ago

It's super hard to tell what's actually happening. Because I've seen other reports that Iran state media halted traffic earlier today, as reported by Washington Post[1]:

> With Trump and Iran each claiming victory, but still far apart on key issues, traffic in the Strait of Hormuz remained at a standstill Wednesday.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/04/08/trump-iran-w...

Iran accuses U.S. and Israel of ceasefire violations, threatening truce

With Trump and Iran each claiming victory, but still far apart on key issues, traffic in the Strait of Hormuz remained at a standstill Wednesday.

The Washington Post

tomtomtom777 1d ago

This is a nice overview, but please remove the PolyMarket indicator. It is an obscene prediction mechanism as it creates horrible financial incentives to a war situation. Its degenerate effects have been featured here before. [1]

Let's not condone "measurements" that are effectively ways for people to gain money on important political decisions, affecting the lives of many people.

(1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397822

Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story | Hacker News

FrustratedMonky 1d ago

> "obscene"

And yet, it is the wisdom of the crowds. The crowds being obscene.

Aren't we all constantly hitting re-fresh for updates, and making predictions.

The prediction markets are just consolidating that 'desire'.

tomtomtom777 1d ago

Well, it would be if everyone betting wouldn't have an influence on the outcome. That's "wisdom of the crowds". But what if the people putting money on the Strait being closed are the same that close them? Surely, that's no longer the wisdom of the crowds at play. Just perverse incentives.

FrustratedMonky 1d ago

I agree. Maybe an un-expected outcome.

Who could have foreseen that a government/person would actually blatantly start a war, and manipulate bombing raids in order to manipulate a market, without being charged with a crime himself.

In sports betting, it seems obvious if a player throws a game.

In a war? Surely nobody would do this, right? Who could imagine it.

tomtomtom777 1d ago

You don't have to imagine some giant conspiracy. Fact is, that everyone can make a bet, and there are a lot of people with knowledge and influence in the political decisions made.

In sports, at least the outcome is only effected by the sportsmen. Here, who knows which and how many people have inside knowledge and influence that they can use that to their financial advantage?

FrustratedMonky 1d ago

Yeah.
I have to agree. My view has changed in last week.

I never imagined that markets could be so corrupted by those in power, without some other consequences somehow balancing out. Like being arrested, or removed from office.

Forget PolyMarket.
We literally have bets being made on oil futures, directly before a tweet by the president. Openly profiting on direct minute by minute manipulation. Openly corrupt.

heavyset_go 1d ago

Putting bounties on people's heads and public lynchings are the wisdom of crowds and its obscenity in action.

nodesocket 1d ago

By this logic would you also consider trading OIL (USO) and Palantir a "obscene" market.

Yes

micromacrofoot 1d ago

objectively so