Pacific ocean

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announces the removal of all its paper charts for January 1, 2025. Already many charts have been removed from its catalog. Nevertheless, the NOAA has set up a tool, available to maritime libraries, allowing them to replace their paper charts by printing ENCs, equivalent to the old paper charts. The depth shown on NOAA nautical charts is in fathoms; the depth of the paper charts, coming from the printing of ENC, is in meters.

Link to NOAA chart symbol legend

Source Voiles et voiliers: "Since its creation in 1807, the Office of Coast Survey (OCS) - hydrographic service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States - publishes the official nautical charts of the first maritime domain of the world American waters (just ahead of French waters) In the early 1990s, the OCS began to scan its paper charts (raster charts, RNC for Raster Navigational Chart, true copy of the paper on screen) then, very quickly, to produce vector charts The vector immediately became the standard for electronic nautical charts (ENC for Electronic Navigational Chart).
Between 2008 and 2019, the distribution of ENCs increased more than fivefold while that of paper charts fell by half, so the Office of Coast Survey's publishing process was reversed.
However, this set now derives from the hydrographic databases which primarily feed the ENCs, in near real time, before updates or new publications concern, in deferred time, the various scanned formats, which are longer and more expensive. to edit. At the same time, the OCS is rationalizing the breakdown of its some 1,200 ENCs which offer more than 130 scales. The objective of this current program is to display a grid of 9,000 ENCs on 12 standardized scales, including a very large scale with a level of detail better than today (below the overzoom of course).
A huge additional step has just been taken by the OCS, which is about to turn a page of more than two centuries...
Also, since the beginning of 2019, NOAA has been preparing mariners to favor the use of ENCs which are free to download (like all other formats) from the Office of Coast Survey's interactive catalog. While the American paper charts are paying since they induce not only a cost of production - covered by the public service - but also of diffusion and distribution near resellers.
A huge additional step has just been taken by the OCS, which is about to turn a page of more than two centuries… well beyond that with regard to the construction of a cartography heir to a long classical tradition. Indeed, while asking for the opinion of the public and companies that market products and applications from its data on this subject, NOAA announces the total cessation of the production of paper maps, following a plan that will begin in the middle of of 2020 (at the latest by the end of the year) and will end in January 2025."

Before choosing your nautical chart, it is interesting to know the particularities and differences between nautical charts.

All nautical charts, paper or digital, are edited to order and benefit from the latest updates. In accordance with the provisions of Article L221-28 of the Consumer Code, the right of withdrawal cannot be exercised for the supply of goods likely to be obsolete quickly. These charts are neither taken back nor exchanged. Consequently, these orders are concluded definitively as soon as the order is placed by the Customer according to the methods specified in these GCS.