Talk:List of seaports

Baltic Sea table
The Baltic Sea table, in the midst of a clean Wiki-friendly list, is quite jarring and renders the page much too wide for ordinary viewing. Unless someone has a reasonable objection (along the lines of "I'll fix it" or "I'll convert the whole list to tabular form"), I plan to move this table to its own article and convert the Baltic Sea section here to the standard form with a link to the new article. -- Jeff Q 09:09, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I noticed the same, but didn't actually see this done fully. I've replaced the table here with a link now. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   12:48, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Somebody forgot the ports in Black & Azov Seas
Somebody forgot the ports in Black Sea & Sea of Azov. AlexPU 16:56, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Criteria?
What criteria should be used to add or delete ports from this list?

Should some minimum volume of tonnage transhipped per year serve as a criteria? Should some minimum monetary value of goods transshipped per year serve as a criteria? Should each body of water have different criteria?

There are cities on this list that very clearly aren't seaports -- like Sacramento, California. It is over one hundred miles inland! There is nothing on the Sacramento page to indicate it is any kind of port. Is it a riverport? When is a riverport a seaport. If the list is to include riverports that are accessible to seagoing vessels then there are more deserving candidates.

Then there are ports like Houston. Houston is not on a sea. Houston is inland. Houston is at the end of a ship-canal. Is this sufficient to be considered a seaport? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Geo Swan (talk • contribs) 22:19, 21 January 2005 (UTC).
 * I am not sure about global criteria, but for UK ports I would suggest that we use those listed in block capitals at uktradeinfo.com. The significance of the block capitals is that the UK Government (through Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) consider them large enough to have their own separate trade statistics, as opposed to the merged statistics for the smaller ports. If no one objects to this criteria, this would include at least one inland port using a ship canal (Manchester). Road Wizard 15:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I have driven along the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and have seen ocean going ships headed towards Sacramento and especially Stockton. The ships seem to collect agricultural goods for export from California's Central Valley.  Most San Francisco Bay areas ports are dwarfed by the quantity of containers that go though Oakland, but I suspect Stockton and Sacramento combined do more ocean going shipments by weight than does San Francisco itself (I cannot back that up with a reference at this time).  Bulk agricultural products being inexpensive would imply that the dollar amounts shipped from Sacramento and Stockton would be low. Note the mention of tall pylons (to clear ocean going ships) mentioned in the Carquinez Strait article.  Note that Mare Island Naval Shipyard was used by the Navy in 1854.  Note that the Navy has a mothball fleet in Suisun Bay (including the USS Iowa).  See also Port of Stockton, Port of Sacramento, and Sacramento Deep Water Ship Channel 67.86.73.252 (talk) 02:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Clarification needed on Penang and Klang ports listed under South China Sea
I was surprised to find that the ports of Penang and Klang are listed under South China Sea. I feel they should be listed under the Andaman Sea or Malacca Straits, which are a part of the Indian Ocean; whereas now they are being listed under the Pacific Ocean. Could the relavant authors check this up and make it clear to all of us who use Wikipedia.

wikiproject Ports
all the list has links to the towns or cities where the ports are, not to the ports.This is because very few ports have articles on them. This is an important project to work on. Mexaguil 11:44, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Non-sovereign territories
User:Huaiwei has edited this list that in effect has made non-sovereign territories presented in the same way as ordinary subnational entities. &mdash; Instantnood 06:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * OH NOES! - &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by SchmuckyTheCat (talk &bull; contribs) . 07:50, December 9, 2005 (UTC)

Caspian Sea
What about a port in the Caspian Sea? Heimm Old 16:26, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Criteria revisited
The criteria for inclusion in this list need review. Some dictionary definitions of "seaport":
 * a port or harbor on or accessible to a seacoast and providing accommodation for seagoing vessels (Random House Dictionary 2006)
 * A harbor or town having facilities for seagoing ships (American Heritage Dictionary 2006)
 * a sheltered port where ships can take on or discharge cargo  (Wordnet,2006)

Using these definitions, this article should include: ports on seacoasts, and riverports where the river is directly connected to a seacoast and the port is capable of accommodating seagoing vessels.

It should not include: dry ports, inland intermodals, riverports catering only for river or close coastal trade or riverports which have no access to the sea (for example, river ports on inland canals which do not empty into an ocean). It would also seem commonsense to include humans in the definition of "cargo" above - a port like Piraeus is essentially a cruise ship facility, but it clearly fits withi the definition of a seaport.

I'd welcome any other views or comments, but this seems like a reasonable basis for making sure this list is comprehensive but not an indiscriminate mass of detail. Euryalus (talk) 03:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
I propose that List of deep water ports be merged into this article, as follows:
 * Relevance - the deepwater list is essentially made up of ports with substantial potential berth depth. It is not clear why this is a particularly useful defining characteristic - for example, the article includes Port Stephens which is a deep bay with no major shipping facilities and no importance as either a port or a cargo transshipment point. It meets the deepwater port criteria, but its inclusion in the list gives it an importance it doesn't (in this context) deserve.
 * Duplication - The deepwater ports list essentially duplicates this page. If it was complete (which it isn't), it would include around 80-90% of the ports listed in the "List of seaports". We are in effect maintaining two nearly identical articles.
 * Utility - the deepwater list does not appear to provide a particular utility for readers. We have an overall list of seaports (this article) and various subset lists by region or country. Each of these serve as a useful guide to readers looking for more information on their preferred topic. A check of articles linked to "List of deepwater ports" shows that most are wikilinks from the phrase "deep water port", which would be better served by an article explaining what a deep water port was, than a redirect to a list.

Whether by region, berth depth or some other criteria, maintaining an accurate list of seaports is a major task and one which is not done all that well to date. Maintaining two competing lists seems a pointless exercise. By merging the deepwater list with this one we have potential for a single accurate list supported by the regional or national subset pages.

Any comments or alternative viewpoints are welcome. Euryalus (talk) 04:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree with a merger of the two pages. It's been almost three months and no-one's objected to the idea. AD227529 —Preceding unsigned comment added by AD227529 (talk • contribs) 16:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Well I don't think it a good idea. The deepwater ports page should be upgraded and maintained better, perhaps. But a list of all the facilities worldwide that are able to accommodate standard large vessel classes such as Panamax, Suezmax, Mulaccamax etc is very useful if you are trying to find a port capable of handling such vessels. Trying to list all the small harbours around the world is a waste of time unless you state their maximum vessel size. (MrSumner) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.16.174 (talk) 11:05, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Tables
Personally, I would find it useful the two were merged; I find "tables" more useful than "lists". Structurally, List of deep water ports is organized by "country" and List of seaports by "waterbody". Wiki-Tables provide the "class=wikitable sortable" option so that a reader can reorder a table by a selected column.

If each row had column(s) for: In many cases, it is another artificial or natural feature which affects the navigation channel to the port resulting in those limits. Typically either "inland" lock sizes (Panama, Soo-St. Lawrence, Suez, ...) natural features: channels, narrows, shoals, ... determing those maximums.
 * maximum navigation depth, and clarified whether mean sea level, or "low low water - i.e. lowest low tide"
 * maximum berth or dock length
 * maximum ship width

For instance (data below are close, but not 100% verified):

Template GeoGroupTemplate can be used to provide a map.

An issue I have run into with such tables: if they have a lot of rows, then the article gets "too large" (100+ KiloBytes).

Long table work-around is to: Such navigation templates need to allow navigation across:
 * Create template(s) to transclude repetitive pieces
 * Create navigation box templates and break table into smaller pieces/articles.
 * Letters of the alphabet 'A' Anchorage, 'C' Cleveland, ...
 * Countries
 * Waterbodies (Atlantic, Pacific, ...)
 * Class (Panamax, Seawaymax, ...)

Not sure whether navigation box templates can be "dynamic", specifically: reading relevant Category:(s) to populate choices? I can see a "performance" issue with having them that "dynamic" (when a user retrieves-views an article page), perhaps a "bot" which periodically does a scripted-update (based Category:). LeheckaG (talk) 15:40, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

As to the current differences between List of deep water ports and List of seaports; besides the organizational (country versus waterbody) difference I cited above, the "Deep water" list explicitly equates itself with Panamax class size, whereas the "sea" one (to me) would exclude fresh-water lake and river ports (independent of size)? LeheckaG (talk) 15:50, 13 July 2008 (UTC)