As sure as spring arrives, NOAA vessels and independent contractors are hitting the seas for the nation’s 180th hydrographic surveying season, collecting data for over two thousand square nautical miles in high-traffic U.S. coastal waters. New data will update nautical charts around the country. For more information and images for the 2014 survey season, see http://noaacoastsurvey.wordpress.com/

“Nautical charts are the foundation for the nation’s maritime economy, and NOAA hydrographers spend months at sea, surveying critical areas to ensure safe navigation for the shipping, fishing, and boating communities,” said Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, director of the Office of Coast Survey.
“Spring is the traditional beginning of the survey season,” Glang explained. “After a winter of data processing and ship maintenance, the NOAA survey ships now join Coast Survey navigation teams who work year round.”
U.S. waters cover 3.4 million square nautical miles, including a seafloor that is constantly changing due to storms, erosion, and development. To keep the nation’s suite of over a thousand nautical charts up to date, the Office of Coast Survey annually plans hydrographic survey projects to measure water depths and identify new navigational hazards. Survey planners consider requests by marine pilots, port authorities, the Coast Guard, researchers and others when setting the year’s schedule.

Coast Survey’s navigation response teams (NRTs), small 2- or 3-person boats equipped with both multibeam and side scan sonar systems, are acquiring data to address possible charting discrepancies – data that is outdated or wrong – and other concerns. NRT6 is working in San Francisco Bay and will later survey two anchorages near Benicia, Calif., to chart a shoal that has migrated toward the federal channel.

Surveys are planned for approach lanes to ports in Mobile Bay, Ala., and Panama City, Fla. Additionally, NRT1 is investigating shoaling and a changing channel course in Grand Lagoon, and measuring depths and features in West Bay and West Bay Creek, along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway around Panama City. After they finish up in Florida, NRT1 will continue the rest of the 2014 survey season in Louisiana.
As we come up the East Coast, NRT2 will investigate hazards to navigation in the waters of a proposed anchorage area near Jacksonville, Fla., in response to a request from the U.S. Coast Guard.

NOAA Office of Coast Survey is the nation’s nautical chartmaker. Originally formed by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807, Coast Survey updates charts, surveys the coastal seafloor, responds to maritime emergencies, and searches for underwater obstructions that pose a danger to navigation.