Welcome to our live streaming marine traffic camera

This page streams a real-time, live, video feed of the shipping lane in the Bristol Channel, near Portishead. It's best viewed on a big screen.

Scroll to camera Quick start guide    Find out more... 

Quick Start Guide

1. check high tide times here
2. an hour or two before high tide, check marine traffic here
   1. look up and down the channel to see what’s coming
   2. look at the channel port lock gates to see if anything’s coming out
   3. click on  a vessel's icon to identify it and see its destination
3. go to the camera display, tap or hover to see the controls, bottom right
   1. if you can see the middle icon (picture-in-picture) click it to release a floating window so you can keep an eye out for ships
   2. if you can’t see it, keep returning to this page to check

Back to the camera

About This Page

At the northern side of Battery Point, Portishead, runs a deep-water channel where marine traffic comes closer to the coast than anywhere else in the UK. This makes it a great place to watch the ships go by.

The best views are from Battery Point, or Portishead Point as it's also known, so why not come for some ship spotting and enjoy some of Portishead's other attractions while you are here:

• Lake Grounds, with its boating lake, picnic areas and Lakeside Café
• Portishead Open Air Pool, at the other end of the Esplanade, where there's also a café
• our lovely new skate park
• amazing views across the Bristol Channel to the Welsh hills

Many Portishead people, who live with these views, kindly post pictures of interesting ships on social media. Visit Portishead has provided this camera so everyone in the town can take a look any time they want.

The View

To the west of Battery Point lies Woodhill Bay, where the camera is focused. It looks out from the western end of Portishead seafront, across the Bristol Channel, towards the steelworks at Llanwern in South Wales. It is focused in shipping lane, at approximately N 51.5152°, W 2.8235°, or what3words ///football.thudding.juices (see footnote*).

How to Use the Webcam

The camera is focused in the shipping channel and that can't be changed.

Hover your mouse over the webcam image and a set of controls appears in the bottom right-hand corner, a pause button bottom left.

Zoom in and out by pinching on your phone or using a mouse wheel. There's also a zoom control, described below. The low-definition image becomes pixelated as you zoom in.

Controls

The controls work only in your web browser or phone; they don't control the camera for anyone else.
Controls from left to right:

• pause: stops the live feed so you can take a snapshot
• camera: takes a snapshot of the current view
• settings: local zoom -  all other controls are disabled
• picture in picture (PiP):  if your screen is big enough, and your device and web browser support it, opens the camera in a small window elsewhere on your screen, so you can keep an eye on it whilst working
• eye: opens streaming host's website in another tab or window
• expand: the live feed fills your screen - press Esc to return to normal size

Best Time for Marine Traffic Spotting

The best times to look for shipping are an hour or two before, or after, high tide. You can check the day's tide times here, free, without giving away your email address. 

The tides in the Bristol Channel are very strong. Its funnel shape causes the incoming sea to be compressed into a continuously narrowing gap. Further upstream, towards Gloucester, the effect is greater and it creates a phenomenon known as the Severn Bore.

So coming in on an incoming tide, and out on the outgoing, increases a vessel's speed and reduces its fuel consumption. Visitors to Portishead's beaches see fast-moving ships with little or no bow-wave, using just enough power to maintain steerage. The tide also poses problems getting into the docks, so you'll see tugs, sometimes as many as five, helping to manoeuvre larger vessels.

How to identify ships

Several online resources provide information on the vessels you'll see. Most vessels, including larger yachts, report their GPS position every minute or two.

We use Marine Traffic AIS, which is free, easy to use, and doesn't insist on collecting your email address.  Click on a vessel to see its name and journey information. Check upstream and downstream an hour or two before high tide to see what's coming.

Bristol Channel Port Codes

Every port in the world has a country code and a three-letter port code. Portishead is GB PTH. Here is a map and list of port codes and locations of the main ports in the Bristol Channel.

Technical stuff

Manufactured by Dahua, the camera is a 4 mega-pixel, vari-focal, network bullet camera. It's connected by Ethernet to BlueTree's office network, and the image is streamed to a server somewhere on the World-Wide Web. From there, our web page embeds the feed and that's what you're watching. It streams at 115-140 KB/second.

We fixed the camera's focus so it can't be used to identify individuals or vehicles on the Lake Grounds. You can't change the view but you can zoom in. It's not a big image (1980 x 720 pixels), so it soon becomes blurred.

Still Photographs from The Camera

We'll add or swap photographs from time to time as we spot interesting ships. If you get an interesting snapshot from the live stream, please email it to . There's room for plenty more.

How to: Thumbnail photos described left to right, top to bottom; click on one to start scrolling through full-size pictures.

1. PS Waverley, the last sea-going paddle steamer in the country, happened to be passing whilst we were testing the camera, before it was installed in its final position.
   There's more about PS Waverley and her sister ships here, on Visit Portishead. 
2. MV Sartor, an off-shore supply ship, on route for Avonmouth.  We see it often in the Bristol Channel.
3. MV Sloman Hera, a feeder boat on its way to Antwerp.
4. MV Mistral coming into Royal Portbury at dusk, from Liverpool.