The 2017 boating season is coming up fast. Here are just a couple of the things we're doing to bring better services and products to recreational boaters and commercial mariners.
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NOAA invites public comment on National Charting Plan
NOAA invites public comment on the recently released
National Charting Plan. Comments are due by midnight, June 1, 2017. The plan describes the evolving state of marine navigation and nautical chart production, and outlines actions that will provide the customer with a suite of products that are more useful, up-to-date, and safer to navigate with. It is not a plan for the maintenance of individual charts, but a strategy to improve all charts.
Since the introduction of electronic navigational charts (ENCs) thirty years ago, the size of commercial vessels has increased four-fold and navigation systems have become more sophisticated. Additionally, there are now over 15 million recreational boat users in the U.S. and many have joined professional mariners in using electronic chart displays and NOAA digital chart products when navigating. User groups of all types are increasingly expecting more precise, higher resolution charts, and greater timeliness and ease-of-access to chart updates. This plan presents strategies to meet the growing demand.
Read more here
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Getting ready for boating season? Don't forget to get updated NOAA charts. You can find them all at our
chart locator.
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NOAA releases 2017 hydrographic survey season plans
One of Coast Survey's biggest tasks during the winter months is to plan hydrographic survey projects for the coming field season. Survey planners consider requests from stakeholders such as marine pilots, local port authorities, the Coast Guard, and the boating community, and also consider other hydrographic priorities in determining where to survey and when.
Coast Survey has posted this year's "living"
story map outlining our hydrographic survey plans. We will update the story map as the vessels make progress.
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How do you know when it is time to get a new chart?
Coast Survey is making a fundamental change in how we inform users about chart updates. The idea is to give users the ability to visually identify where all changes are occurring on their charts each week. With that information, you can make your own determination about when you may want to purchase an updated paper chart or download an updated raster or electronic navigational chart.
The new
weekly chart updates webpage provides users with weekly information about specific changes in water depths, shoreline, obstructions, or other features on NOAA's nautical charts.
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Collaborative effort leads to new ENC for recreational boaters
Coast Survey
released a new electronic navigation chart (
NOAA ENC®
) of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and the Merrimack River (
US5MA1AM
)
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With this new chart, recreational boaters now ca
n safely navigate the Merrimack River from the entrance at Newburyport all the way to Haverhill, just in time for boating season.
Haverhill is a historic New England town that has recently
undergone an urban renewal with new federal, state, and private investment in the downtown and waterfront areas.
Until now, this area of the river was not depicted at an appropriate scale on a nautical chart for recreational boaters to navigate safely.
The community of Haverhill recognized the importance of recreational boaters to their local economy and led a
grassroots
effort to have a new chart created.
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| New 1:12,000 scale ENC (a) compared to the existing 1:80,000 ENC (b) of the Haverhill area on the Merrimack River. |
In order to address immediate concerns regarding safe navigation, the Greater Haverhill Foundation
privately funded a hydrographic survey of the river.
The new, larger-scale ENC was compiled using U.S. Army Corps of Engineers data, NOAA lidar data, and the privately funded survey data.
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