Where the aircraft carriers were, day by day: the US since 1998, China as Japan reports it, and the UK, France, Japan and India from their navies' public reports. Plus US amphibious assault ships, week by week. A ship is drawn at the area it was last reported in; nothing here is tracked live.
- Log: gonavy.jp Aircraft Carrier Locations, a hand-kept public record of where each US carrier was reported, compiled from Navy releases and news. Used here with credit; all errors in placing it on a map are ours.
- Amphibious ships, and a weekly check: USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker, a weekly post (since July 2017) giving where each deployed carrier and big-deck amphibious ship (LHA/LHD) is. Amphibious ships come only from it, so they are shown within 10 days of a weekly mention; for carriers it only fills days the gonavy log leaves empty.
- Chinese carriers: Japan Joint Staff Office press releases on Chinese Navy movements, which give dated positions ("about 130 km east of Miyako Island") whenever Japan observes the carriers near its waters. Elsewhere they go unreported: more than 12 days between sightings, the carrier is drawn in its home port (Qingdao, or Dalian during Liaoning's 2023 refit; Sanya for Shandong and Fujian), marked "presumed".
- UK, French, Japanese and Indian carriers: no one publishes a day-by-day log for these, so each has a hand-kept log of dated reports: port visits, exercises, transits, refits. They come from the ships' Wikipedia articles (English, French and Japanese), navy news and the press, and each entry links its source in the ship's log. Between reports during a known deployment the ship is drawn on its way; outside deployments, with no report, it is drawn in its home port and marked "presumed". Their trails are told apart by colour and, always, by the flag and label at their end.
- Places: each entry is matched to a hand-made gazetteer: ports are points, seas and operating areas are circles (the halo). "WestPac" or "Indian Ocean" says little, so the ship is drawn in the part of the area nearest its route.
- Ship photos and descriptions: each ship's Wikipedia article and its lead image from Wikimedia Commons (credited and linked on the photo).
- Between entries the ship is drawn moving at a steady pace along a shipping-lane route (searoute). That is an estimate, not a track: carriers don't publish positions and usually sail with AIS off.
- Log gaps: where two entries would need more than ~35 knots, an entry is missing or misdated; that leg is dashed.