Article by Capt. Steve Katz
Charting your way this season
Welcome to the 2019 fishing season. As most of you know, many companies in the marine business introduce new products during the winter boat show season in Florida. This year was no exception and I was able to attend these events and get a firsthand look at many of the new products.
One area that has become much more competitive with new offerings this year is electronic navigation and fishing charts. For those who don’t know, many of the independent marine charting companies have been bought up by the major marine electronics manufacturers over the last few years, with not many benefits to the boaters until recently.
Garmin, who purchased Navionics in October 2017, has been diligently working to revamp their cartography since. Garmin GPS displays are only compatible with Garmin branded cartography and this is still the case. Whereas Simrad, Lowrance, Furuno and Raymarine often have the ability to use third party charts along with the manufacturers own brand of charts.
This winter Garmin introduced the g3 charts, which now (finally) include the integration of Navionics cartography data. The Navionics company, founded in Italy, introduced the world's first marine electronic chart plotter in 1984 and has continued to develop cartography solutions for boating and fishing enthusiasts. Many boaters are familiar with Navionics, often hailed as the best marine charts available.
This new Garmin g3 cartography includes much better detail than their previous g2 charts, including navigational aids, spot soundings, depth contours, tides, currents and detailed harbors and marinas. For fishing, the new G3 charts offer seamless chart presentation with up to 1-foot fishing contours that provide a more accurate depiction of bottom structure for improved fishing charts and enhanced detail in swamps, canals, marinas and port plans.
These g3 charts also include Auto Guidance, a simple marine auto-navigation technology that is included with all Garmin g3 accessory cards, and built-in to many Garmin chartplotter—all at no additional cost. The Auto Guidance feature is used to allow the chartplotter to automatically create a route to the destination based on user-determined Auto Guidance parameters. These parameters are customizable for your boat and include details such as, minimum depth, vessel height and shoreline distance.
The top of the line g3 accessory card, BlueChart g3 Vision, includes everything available with BlueChart g3, plus high-resolution satellite imagery that provides boaters with a realistic view of their surroundings. Unique 3-D views, including MarinerEye and FishEye, provide additional perspective both above and below the water line, and aerial photography shows exceptional detail of many ports, harbors and marinas, which is especially useful when entering unfamiliar ports.
While we focus on coastal fishing locally, I should not overlook that the g3 cartography is also available for inland waterways and lakes. The LakeVü g3 Ultra includes maps of more than 17,000 lakes with up to 1-foot contours. Of those, over 150 are Garmin Elite surveyed lakes with high-resolution satellite imagery, multi-beam shore-to-shore sonar views, side scan photos and photos of notable spots above the water too. LakeVü g3 Ultra also includes high-resolution relief shading that adds visual depth to the 2-D map, making it easier to interpret contours, Dynamic Lake Level and more.
For those who have another brand of marine electronics, there is also a newly introduced charting product now available for our geographic area. Back in 2017 a small startup company run by watermen, CMOR Mapping, released its first electronic, highly detailed ocean bottom and structure chart (Bathymetry) for Florida and they have finally introduced a chart for coverage for our mid-Atlantic area.
The CMOR map data is put together from multiple sources including commercial-grade multi-beam sonar and aerial LIDAR. CMOR Mapping has produced high-resolution Bathymetry at major fishing and diving regions that is compatible with most Simrad, Lowrance and Raymarine chartplotters, as well as some Mercury VesselView systems and soon some Furuno multifunction displays. All vector data such as tides and navigational aids can also be viewed as an overlay. Pixel resolution is as great as 1 meter (each pixel represents 1 square meter of bottom). With “Depth Shading” switched on, every undulation becomes highlighted.
Much of the amazing detail on the CMOR maps comes from aerial LIDAR technology. LIDAR is an acronym for Light Detection and Ranging, which is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth from an aircraft.
These light pulses—combined with other data recorded by the airborne system, generate precise, three-dimensional information about the shape of the Earth, both above and below the water. The Bathymetric LIDAR uses water-penetrating green light to measure seafloor and riverbed elevations. In our area, the amazing bottom detail from LIDAR is available for the near shore area out to 20 miles and the commercial-grade, multi-beam sonar is used for the deeper water in the canyons. These CMOR maps are not intended for navigation. They are purposely designed for fishing and diving enthusiasts who want to see the seafloor in great detail.
These new charting options are a great way to gather more information about the fishing grounds in addition to helping you catch more fish and enjoying your time on the water.
Captain Steve Katz is the owner of Steve’s Marine Service and holds NMEA, AMEI and NMEA2000 certificates along with ABYC Master Technician certification and factory training from many manufacturers. To reach Steve, call 410-231-3191.
