Canada CHS update in the Marine GeoGarage

As our public viewer is not yet available
(currently under construction, upgrading to a new online viewer as Google Maps v2 is officially no more supported),
this info is primarily intended to our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers
in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API. 

CHS raster charts coverage

29 charts have been updated & 3 new charts have been added (December 01, 2014)

• 1230 PLANS PÉNINSULE DE LA GASPÉSIE
• 1515A PAPINEAUVILLE À/TO OTTAWA
• 1515B BECKETTS CREEK
• 2250 BRUCE MINES TO/À SUGAR ISLAND
• 3443 THETIS ISLAND TO/À NANAIMO
• 3447 NANAIMO HARBOUR AND/ET DEPARTURE BAY
• 3456 HALIBUT BANK TO/À BALLENAS CHANNEL
• 3902 HECATE STRAIT
• 3927 BONILLA ISLAND TO/À EDYE PASSAGE
• 3934 APPROACHES TO/APPROACHES À SMITH SOUND AND/ET RIVERS INLET
• 3956 MALACCA PASSAGE TO/À BELL PASSAGE
• 3957 APPROACHES TO/APPROCHES À PRINCE RUPERT HARBOUR
• 4023 NORTHUMBERLAND STRAIT / DÉTROIT DE NORTHUMBERLAND
• 4049 GRAND BANK NORTHERN PORTION/GRAND BANC PARTIE NORD TO\À FLEMISH PASS/PAS
• 4202 HALIFAX HARBOUR POINT PLEASANT TO/À BEDFORD BASIN
• 4335 STRAIT OF CANSO AND APPROACHES/ET LES APPROCHES
• 4416 HAVRE DE GASPÉ
• 4448 PORT HOOD
• 4462 ST. GEORGE'S BAY
• 4522 TILT COVE AND/ET LA SCIE HARBOUR (APPROACHES TO/APPROCHES À LA SCIE HARBOUR
• 4644 BAY D'ESPOIR AND/ET HERMITAGE BAY
• 4653 BAY OF ISLANDS
• 4827 HARE BAY TO / À FORTUNE HEAD
• 4850 CAPE ST FRANCIS TO / À BACCALIEU ISLAND AND / ET HEART'S CONTENT
• 4905 CAPE TORMENTINE À/TO WEST POINT
• 4909 BUCTOUCHE HARBOUR
• 4921 PLANS-BAIE DES CHALEURS / CHALEUR BAY - CÔTE NORD / NORTH SHORE
• 5033 HAWKE BAY AND/ET SQUASHNO RUN
• 6242A WINNIPEG TO/À SELKIRK
• 6242B SELKIRK TO LAKE WINNIPEG/SELKIRK AU LAC WINNIPEG
• 6267 GRINDSTONE POINT TO BERENS RIVER
• 6358 NORTHWEST POINT TO / À JONES POINT   NEW
• 6359 JONES POINT TO / À BURNT POINT   NEW
• 6360 WINDY POINT TO / À SLAVE POINT   NEW

So 696 charts (1680 including sub-charts) are available in the Canada CHS layer. (see coverage)

Note : don't forget to visit 'Notices to Mariners' published monthly and available from the Canadian Coast Guard both online or through a free hardcopy subscription service.
This essential publication provides the latest information on changes to the aids to navigation system, as well as updates from CHS regarding CHS charts and publications.
See also written Notices to Shipping and Navarea warnings : NOTSHIP

Ocean gravity

Ocean Gravity is a short film with Guillaume Néry and Julie Gautier, 
freedivers that rewrite the rules of the underwater world
and takes us this time into the world of the weightlessness. 

On their website, Néry says about this film:
my diving has always propelled my imagination to the fantasy of space conquest.

To touch the sea floor or to set foot on an unexplored planet, here are two fascinating adventures which feed my thirst of the unknown.

 Passe de Tiputa (Rangiroa, Tuamutu) with the Marine GeoGarage

The discovery of this quite unique place, the Tiputa Pass, made it possible to put the visual closeness of two universes – water and air, ocean and space – into film 

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  Base jumping combined with free diving / Narcose

Sailing in Patagonia

Boarding on Venus with Christophe, the Capt'n,
for a dreaming cruising in the Southern part of South America

in the Patagonia channel until Cape Horn via the Beagle channel

Colorful and Plankton-full Patagonian Waters

(NASA)

Full scale of plastic in the world's oceans revealed for first time

Sailing seas of plastic map

From The Guardian by Oliver Millman

Over five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans says most comprehensive study to date on plastic pollution around the world

More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world’s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has found.
Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand suggests a minimum of 5.25tn plastic particles in the oceans, most of them “micro plastics” measuring less than 5mm.
The volume of plastic pieces, largely deriving from products such as food and drink packaging and clothing, was calculated from data taken from 24 expeditions over a six-year period to 2013.
The research, published in the journal PLOS One, is the first study to look at plastics of all sizes in the world’s oceans.

 Inside the Garbage of the World Documentary :

Is the Plastic Trash Island floating in the Pacific Ocean a myth?
Are we getting poisoned?
How long do we have before a worldwide disaster happen?
This Documentary includes interview from Capt. Moore (Algalita Marine Research Institute), Anna Cummins (5 gyres Institute), Dr Andrea Neal (Jean-Michel Cousteau), Surfrider Foundation and a variety of Scientist and Doctors who have been researching how bad the situation is.
It will give you a real idea of how much damage we are creating and how fast we have to stop in order to survive the future.

Large pieces of plastic can strangle animals such as seals, while smaller pieces are ingested by fish and then fed up the food chain, all the way to humans.
This is problematic due to the chemicals contained within plastics, as well as the pollutants that plastic attract once they are in the marine environment.
“We saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that ingested fishing lines,” said Julia Reisser, a researcher based at the University of Western Australia.
“But there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water it acts like a magnet for oily pollutants.
“Bigger fish eat the little fish and then they end up on our plates. It’s hard to tell how much pollution is being ingested but certainly plastics are providing some of it.”

The researchers collected small plastic fragments in nets, while larger pieces were observed from boats.
The northern and southern sections of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were surveyed, as well as the Indian ocean, the coast of Australia and the Bay of Bengal.
The vast amount of plastic, weighing 268,940 tonnes, includes everything from plastic bags to fishing gear debris.
While spread out around the globe, much of this rubbish accumulates in five large ocean gyres, which are circular currents that churn up plastics in a set area.
Each of the major oceans have plastic-filled gyres, including the well-known ‘great Pacific garbage patch’ that covers an area roughly equivalent to Texas.
Reisser said traversing the large rubbish-strewn gyres in a boat was like sailing through “plastic soup.”
“You put a net through it for half an hour and there’s more plastic than marine life there,” she said. “It’s hard to visualise the sheer amount, but the weight of it is more than the entire biomass of humans. It’s quite an alarming problem that’s likely to get worse.”

Plastic Accumulation in Oceanic Gyres

The research found that the gyres themselves are likely to contribute to the problem, acting as “shredders” to the plastic before dispersing it.
“Our findings show that the garbage patches in the middle of the five subtropical gyres are not the final resting places for the world’s floating plastic trash,” said Marcus Eriksen, another of the report’s co-authors.
“The endgame for micro-plastic is interactions with entire ocean ecosystems.”

The research, the first of its kind to pull together data on floating plastic from around the world, will be used to chart future trends in the amount of debris in the oceans.
But researchers predict the volume will increase due to rising production of throwaway plastic, with only 5% of the world’s plastic currently recycled.
“Lots of things are used once and then not recycled,” Reisser said.
“We need to improve our use of plastic and also monitor plastics in the oceans so we get a better understanding of the issue.

“I’m optimistic but we need to get policy makers to understand the problem. Some are doing that – Germany has changed the policy so that manufacturers are responsible for the waste they produce. If we put more responsibility on to the producer then that would be part of the solution.”

Links :

• Discovery : Oceans may hold 250,000 tons of trash

US NOAA update in the Marine GeoGarage

As our public viewer is not yet available
(currently under construction, upgrading to a new viewer as Google Maps API v2 is officially no more supported),
this info is primarily intended to our iPhone/iPad universal mobile application users
(Marine US on the App Store)
and also to our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API. 

 NOAA raster chart coverage

13 charts have been updated in the Marine GeoGarage

(NOAA update November 2014, released November 17th 2014)

• 11489 ed40 Intracoastal Waterway St. Simons Sound to Tolmato River
• 11490 ed21 Approaches to St. Johns River;St. Johns River Entrance
• 11491 ed39 St. Johns River-Atlantic Ocean to Jacksonville
• 11515 ed19 Savannah River Brier Creek to Augusta
• 11524 ed54 Charleston Harbor
• 11526 ed11 Wando River Upper Part
• 12369 ed27 North Shore of Long Island Sound Stratford to Sherwood Point
• 13283 ed23 Portsmouth Harbor Cape Neddick Harbor to Isles of Shoals; Portsmouth Harbor
• 14967 ed24 Beaver Bay to Pigeon Point;Silver Bay Harbor;Taconite Harbor;Grand Marais Harbor
• 17301 ed9 Cape Spencer to Icy Point
• 17314 ed13 Slocum and Limestone Inlets and Taku Harbor
• 17316 ed21 Lynn Canal-Icy Str. to Point Sherman;Funter Bay;Chatham Strait
• 17362 ed11 Gambier Bay. Stephens Passage

Today 1026 NOAA raster charts (2168 including sub-charts) are included in the Marine GeoGarage viewer (see PDFs files)


How do you know if you need a new nautical chart?
See the changes in new chart editions.
NOAA chart dates of recent Print on Demand editions

Note : NOAA updates their nautical charts with corrections published in:

• U.S. Coast Guard Local Notices to Mariners (LNMs),
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Notices to Mariners (NMs), and
• Canadian Coast Guard Notices to Mariners (CNMs)

While information provided by this Web site is intended to provide updated nautical charts, it must not be used as a substitute for the United States Coast Guard, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or Canadian Coast Guard Notice to Mariner publications

Please visit the NOAA's chart update service for more info or the online chart catalog