Agree that Hawaii is (gloriously) remote, but to my eye there still seems to be less shipping in its vicinity on average than there is in similarly remote areas

Agree that Hawaii is (gloriously) remote, but to my eye there still seems to be less shipping in its vicinity on average than there is in similarly remote areas of the Pacific. But I also just noticed I was misinterpreting the scale of the map and had substantially overestimated the breadth of Hawaiian archipelago, so the seeming absence of non-Hawaiian traffic could certainly be a function of, well, being smack in the middle of a giant ocean with not much else around. That said, another thing I noticed that makes me think could be a regulatorily driven pattern - there’s a quite noticeable void in the map around the Galapagos. I assume that’s some sort of environmental regulation, and vessels either route around (or turn off their transponders) due to that - wondering if there’s a reason to do the same in US waters that doesn’t really seem to hold true anywhere other than the US or the Galapagos.