New Daily Index Puts a Number on Public Attention to Shipping

A single daily number — 69.3 as of launch day — now measures how much the world is actually paying attention to shipping. The Maritime Attention Index, created by crisis communications specialist Dustin Eno, went live this week after a long trail of previews on Splash, and it hands maritime companies a tool that media monitoring has never quite delivered: a reading of attention, not publication volume.

What does the index actually measure?

It works by blending four data streams into one score. Google searches, Wikipedia page views, social media activity and mainstream news coverage feed a daily figure, with 50 set as the normal baseline. Anything above that means shipping is cutting through to the public more than usual.

The distinction matters. "Media monitoring tells you how much is being published about shipping, not how much attention it gets," Eno said. His index flips that question around. "I built the index to answer a simple question with a single number: how much attention is shipping getting right now?" he explained.

What can users do with it?

The platform is publicly accessible and interactive. Users can:

• Examine historical attention spikes, with data stretching back to the start of the 2020s
• Compare incidents side by side
• Track how quickly public interest fades after major maritime events

The dataset already covers the events every shipping professional will recognise. The Ever Given grounding, the Wakashio wreck and the Dali casualty in Baltimore all register as sharp spikes. The all-time high belongs to the Ever Given's closure of the Suez Canal in 2021 — the moment a container ship, a dug-out canal bank and a week of global trade paralysis turned shipping into a global spectacle.

What does the pattern data show?

This is where the index gets analytically interesting. Eno's analysis reveals remarkably consistent patterns in how interest fades after major maritime incidents. Attention spikes hard, then decays on a curve that repeats with striking regularity across very different events.

Adjust for duration and intensity, and the attention curve around this year's Iran conflict closely resembles the curves generated by the Ever Given grounding and the Baltimore bridge collapse. Different events, different geographies, same shape of public interest. That consistency is the index's real asset — it lets a communications team forecast how long a story will stay alive.

Why the timing is uncomfortable

For an industry that measures itself in TEU, tonnes and dollars, an attention score of 332.3 — the level the index hit during the opening fortnight of the US attacks on Iran in March — is a warning, not a trophy. High attention on shipping usually means something has gone wrong: a grounded boxship, a collapsed bridge, a war risk corridor.

Eno has used the underlying methodology before in Splash commentary. What's new is that the index now runs as an interactive public resource, accompanied by monthly analysis, giving comms teams, insurers and analysts a standing benchmark rather than one-off studies.

What changes for shipping companies?

Practically, three things. Crisis planners can now time their response windows against a measured decay curve instead of gut feel. Marketing teams get a verified baseline of 50 to judge whether a campaign genuinely moved public interest. And incident responders can compare their event against prior casualties to set expectations for how long the spotlight lasts.

Today's reading of 69.3 — comfortably above normal but far from crisis territory — suggests shipping is registerering mildly with the public. If Eno's fade patterns hold, the monthly analysis that accompanies the index will show whether that modest elevation decays on schedule, or whether the next Suez-scale event resets the all-time high.