The Great Lakes Gazette is a free daily maritime publication built for anyone who watches the lakes. It pulls from four live data sources every morning, AIS vessel tracking, NOAA water levels, National Weather Service marine forecasts, and Great Lakes Now conservation news, and assembles them into a short readable brief that takes two minutes and tells you what is actually happening on the water today.
The brief is written by AI (Claude Haiku) from the day's live data. No invented facts, no filler. If it is not in the data, it does not appear in the brief. The vessel movement data comes from publicly accessible AIS transponder networks. The water level data is published by NOAA under a public domain license. The forecasts are official NWS products. The Gazette is simply the assembly layer.
The Great Lakes navigation season runs from late March through January, anchored by the annual opening of the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie. The locks are the only passage between Lake Superior and the lower lakes, every vessel moving iron ore, coal, grain, or limestone between Duluth and the lower ports passes through them. The Gazette tracks AIS vessel passages at the Soo and six other Great Lakes chokepoints throughout the season.
For background on how to track freighters using live AIS data, vessel types on the Great Lakes, and the best viewing spots along the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay, see the Great Lakes freighter tracking guide.
The Gazette exists because the information a Great Lakes watcher actually wants, what vessels are moving, what the water levels are doing, what the weather looks like on the open lake, is scattered across four or five separate sites, none of them built for a quick morning read. Living in Bay City on Saginaw Bay, the lakes are a daily presence. The Gazette pulls it all into one place.
It is free, requires no login, and carries no advertising. It is a tool for anyone who pays attention to the lakes, whether you are watching vessels from the breakwall, planning time on the water, or just want to know what is moving on the Great Lakes today.
The Gazette connects to a broader set of Great Lakes content on this site: Great Lakes maritime history, Saginaw Bay ecology, Great Lakes shipwrecks, and the freighter tracking guide.