Ship’s Navigational Safety in the Arctic Unsurveyed Regions

High traffic of the vessels in many regions of the world pressed maritime nations to issue good quality nautical charts. Vessels could proceed safely on planned voyage using nautical chart and GPS position receiver. Above popular assumptions were right in well recognized and charted regions. But some regions were not sufficiently surveyed or not surveyed at all. In this case position fixing system was useless. The only way was to follow the vessel’s hydroacoustic equipment to find out safe route in between dangers. The goal of the author was to settle matters of the unsurveyed regions. First question was quality of the in-formation on charts and role of the vessel’s autonomous hydroacoustic equipment in safety of the navigation. Second question were safety parameters kept by the research vessel.