2012 Planned Projects and Descriptions

Responding to requests of the maritime industry and the U.S. Coast Guard, Coast Survey is prioritizing requests for the 2012 hydrographic survey season. The mission is to acquire hydrographic data and update navigational charts for areas with high levels of commercial traffic and passenger cruise ships, and in areas important to the development of strategic resources.

The true Arctic lies ahead for the Office of Coast Survey hydrography and charting in 2012. This year, Coast Survey will venture the furthest north it has gone in fifty years, with NOAA Ship Fairweather planning to survey the sparsely and inadequately measured depths of the approaches to Red Dog Mine (the world's largest producer of zinc concentrate) in the Chukchi Sea.

The importance of ensuring the accuracy of charts used by passenger cruise lines is also front and center, especially following the Costa Concordia tragedy in Italy. Fairweather is slated to survey Alaskan coastline transited by a major cruise line, and both the Fairweather and Rainier will likely survey Alaska ferry routes as well as other commercial transit areas in the Gulf of Alaska.

Rainier is also tentatively scheduled to survey critical navigation areas around the state of Washington.
The NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson will return to areas experiencing high levels of commercial shipping in Long Island and Block Island Sounds, off the coast of New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. In addition, NOAA's Navigation Response Team 5 will survey within New York Harbor and Eastern Long Island Sound. Combined, this work will produce critical chart updates for shippers and mariners moving American exports out of the Port of New York & New Jersey.

This year, NOAA is planning to add a new ocean and coastal survey vessel, the Ferdinand Hassler, to its current lineup of survey ships. Hassler is tentatively scheduled to survey approaches to the Chesapeake Bay.
The 2012 Planned Projects and Descriptions is available as a PDF.

February 23, 2012