New NOAA Chart for Remote Alaska Islands

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- October 23, 2006

All-new charts are not often issued by NOAA

A new NOAA chart has been created for a remote area of Alaska which includes nine mostly treeless and ragged rock islands. The chart, NOAA’s chart number 16587, covers the Semidi Islands and Vicinity, which is a subunit of the 715,000-acre Alaska Peninsula Unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The Semidi Islands are located in the Pacific Ocean in far southeast Alaska, east of the coast of the Alaska Peninsula and southwest of Kodiak Island.

The Semidi Islands Wilderness Area includes approximately one-quarter million acres of surrounding seabed, providing at least temporary homes for sea otters, sea lions, seals, porpoises, and whales. Exposed to the stormy Gulf of Alaska, the area is described as “remote and difficult to reach … an unpredictable stretch of sea lying in previously poorly charted waters”.

Rough area
According to Leo DeMeo, marketing manager for McCurnin Nautical Charts of Alaska, Inc., “The Semidi Islands are in open water with high, rough rough seas, which are unpredictable. It has some shallow waters that can be very dangerous if you don’t know your way around. Fishermen know it from experience but now we have a chart that can make sailing in that area safer for everyone. We’re excited to have a new, detailed NOAA chart for this area.”

Richard Sillcox, Chief of NOAA’s Chart Update Service, states, “Marine safety is of utmost importance to NOAA. It’s not often that we create a new NOAA nautical chart but after listening to the needs of sailors and commercial shippers, we felt it prudent to create a new chart for this area.”

New chart can be ordered "on demand"
Chart number 16587, as well as all NOAA nautical charts, are printed to order “on demand” by OceanGrafix and it agents across the U.S. Many agents have dedicated OceanGrafix remote printers on site. These printers are hooked into an OceanGrafix database and they automatically download the latest NOAA cartographic data every night so that each OceanGrafix NOAA chart is 100% up to date at time of printing. Charts can be printed at any time.

Larry Kocon, OceanGrafix director of operations, states, “We’re pleased to be the exclusive NOAA partner in offering commercial and recreational mariners the very latest NOAA cartographic data on a ‘print on demand’ basis. Up to date, full-size NOAA nautical charts add to mariners’ safety.”