The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has announced that it has discontinued the tender process for the maintenance of Aids to Navigation around Australia.
“AMSA’s approach to market has not identified a suitable contractor. AMSA will now pursue an alternative strategy to maintain the national network of AtoNs beyond the current maintenance contract, which expires at end of June 2024,” the regulator said, but did not indicate what that alternative strategy might be.
AMSA manages about 480 Aids to Navigation across 390 sites, and this includes 62 lighthouses “which all have valuable heritage significance”.
Aids to Navigation include such things as:
- traditional lighthouses
- beacons
- buoys
- radar transponder beacons (racons)
- Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS)
- Automatic Identification System (AIS) AtoN
- Met-ocean sensors such as:
- broadcasting tide gauges
- directional wave rider buoys
- current metres
- weather stations.
“Our AtoN are used as key navigational tools by seafarers, enabling them to take responsibility for their own safety at sea. By maintaining and improving this service, we are making coastal navigation safer and helping prevent loss of life and marine pollution that could result from wrecked or stranded vessels.,” AMSA says.
The Aids to Navigation network is used by the commercial shipping industry and is provided in accordance with IMO obligations (such as SOLAS (as amended, Chapter V Regulations 10, 11, 12 and 13) and guidance issued by the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities.
In its document Navigation services in Australian waters: Outlook to 2030, AMSA notes that visual aids to navigation will remain “essential” for the safe navigation of ships. “However, by 2030 they may be secondary to the way in which many (but not all) vessels will navigated. Automated navigation of ships represents a monumental shift in global surface transportation but … there will still be reliance on supporting systems such as physical aids to navigation and other forms of operation control by humans”.
AMSA forsees a growing use of electronic aids to navigation to supplement the marking of hazards, particularly temporary hazards owing to the relative ease of establishing virtual markings.
AMSA notes that the implications for industry include an improved aid to navigation network efficiency and cost savings as providers review their mix of visual and electronic aids. Ships will increasing need modern navigation systems, AMSA thinks, but warns that virtual aids to navigation will be lmited as they will not always be seen on all navigation systems.
The stated policy response of the Authority is to work with maintenance providers to adopt technologies and practices that enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the aids to navigation network, and also to explore obtaining near real-time satellite Automatic Identification System information. But, in the short term, the Authority enivsages optimising and maintaining AMSA’s terrestrial AIS infrastructure, particularly in areas where it is important to transmit messages to ships via AIS.
