About NOAA
Fulfilling one of the primary measures of its charter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produces updated and detailed navigation charts of all domestic waters of the United States. This is a crucial part of NOAA’s mandate:
To understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our nation’s economic, social and environmental needs.
Simply stated, NOAA aims to provide a comprehensive framework in which to make policy regarding the marine interests of the United States. Navigation charts are a crucial part of achieving this goal, using up-to-date information about the subaqueous environment to serve the following concerns:
- aiding transcontinental commerce
- ensuring maritime safety to travelers
- assisting in education and preservation of coastal environments
- maintaining intelligence for the purposes of homeland security
Several component organizations are set up to contribute various types of information to the home office from different places within its management. The Office of Coast Survey (OCS) is the division responsible for the creation and update of navigation charts. As the ocean floor and other navigational landmarks are often changing, those who carry people and goods on the water must keep up with the changing environment. And as maritime trade and travel are expected to more than double in the period between 1998 and 2020, NOAA will find a growing need for the charts that enable navigation of United States waters.
History
The pursuit of ever more accurate and detailed charts began with President Thomas Jefferson’s aim in 1807 to cause a survey to be taken of coasts of the United States, in which shall be designated the island and shoals and places of anchorage, and has been ratified and revised 1947’s Coast and Geodatic Survey Act and later the Hydrographic Services Improvement Acts of 1998 and 2002.
In the years following 1807, the United States experienced an enormous surge in population growth, an overwhelming majority of which was due to immigration by sea. Sometime before 1836, the governmental department which Jefferson and his Congress had charged with surveying the nation’s coasts was formally named the US Coastal Survey.
In the late 1800’s, as US settlement moved steadily westward, Atlantic and Pacific information was reconciled, and a geodetic connection was authorized and enforced, which was called the Coastal and Geodetic Survey (C&GS). Surveys continued, updated periodically through the early 20th century, and in 1926, an important technological innovation allowed even more detailed coastal cartography than had yet been done. Aircraft began to fly over the US coasts to add bird’s eye perspective to the navigation charts created by C&GS.
Massive organizational changes and restructurings brought the C&GS to be an office under the National Ocean Service, which then reported to NOAA by 1982. By the 1990’s, the office was renamed C&GS. Later, under President Clinton’s multi-dimensional, cross-department streamline process, the C&GS was dismembered, and its components became direct divisions of the Office of Coast Survey (OCS), which continues to this day as the governmental agency responsible for creating navigation charts for the thousands of boats currently in US waters.
Contemporary Needs & Agency Response
As the technologies of marine travel have increased both the magnitude and the reliability of ships, the need for accurate navigational information has changed drastically. Boats and ships have grown larger as human travel has moved skyward and shipping has become our dominant method of goods transit.
An image from the NOAA website shows how boats have increased in depth to such a degree that a ship of the kind that transported the colonists from England could fit one and a half times height-wise in the space between the bottom of a modern barge and the bottom of the Spanish Armada’s largest vessel. Needless to say, the old technique of dropping lead-lines to survey the ocean is no longer sufficient to keep such enormous vessels from running “aground” in the middle of the ocean.
SONAR methods have become the dominant mode of survey. Combined with the detailed cartographic surface surveys enabled by aeronautic surveys, SONAR depth and relief figures have been added to OCS’ navigation charts to create the most complete navigation tool possible.
Along with their accuracy, the navigation charts created by OCS are updated on a schedule more frequent than most hydrographic offices. Such speed of revision has allowed NOAA through the OCS to respond quickly to changes.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for example, NOAA was able to provide never-before-seen detail in data regarding the ways in which a major weather phenomenon drastically rearranges the coastal shelf. The northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico was surveyed extensively in the weeks following the hurricane, which prevented further disaster as ships brought goods through the gulf to the hardest hit coastal areas.
In previous disasters, getting relief and aid to where it was most needed was a chancy endeavor, and captains and fleet managers had to make good decisions as to what underwater avenues they could use to send help. NOAA through the OCS was able to survey the changes and make new navigation charts which allowed for the relief efforts to move forward much more efficiently than they would have otherwise done.
As the information age brings the future to the present almost instantly, economic, meteorological, and security issues become increasingly globalized. In such an environment, the challenge to move crucial information, especially in the creation of updated, accurate navigation charts, will only grow. NOAA’s plans for the future include a massive integration of ocean mapping technologies that is currently under way, and is expected to continue over the next decade or so.
Cooperative efforts with the equivalent offices of US allies are essential and will only become more important in the future. One of the OCS’ preferred partners, the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO), is currently executing plans with US offices to augment the speed and efficiency with which NOAA monitors coastal waters. |
