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NOAA Ship Whiting
July 1998 Featured Platform

Whiting departed its home port of Norfolk, Virginia, in March to begin its 36th season of conducting hydrographic survey operations in support of NOAA's National Ocean Service nautical charting program. One of NOAA's three hydrographic survey vessels, Whiting acquires and processes hydrographic data that will ultimately be portrayed on one of NOAA's nautical charts. The nautical charts are vital to ensure the safe navigation of the nation's foreign trade, 98% of which travels in U.S. coastal waters. The charts are depended upon by military, passenger, and fishing vessels, as well by the growing sector of recreational boaters.

Whiting and its two 28-foot aluminum-hulled Jensen survey launches are outfitted with survey systems to acquire and process depth sounding and side-scan sonar data, thus ensuring full bottom coverage of the areas being surveyed. Paramount to the mission of updating the depth soundings for nautical charts is locating wrecks and obstructions that pose a potential hazard to surface navigation.
At the heart of Whiting's data acquisition system is HYPACK, a PC-based hydrographic survey package. HYPACK runs on a standard Pentium PC and is connected, via serial communications, to all the survey sensors. The Whiting's sensors are capable of determining the depth of water to within 0.1 meters and determining geographic position to within 3 meters using the differential global positioning system. The survey data acquired is then processed aboard Whiting on the PC-based Hydrographic Processing System which is tightly integrated with the commercial GIS package MapInfo. The system and software allow the ship's hydrographer to review, visualize, correlate and analyze the survey data near real time to determine if the mission objectives have been accomplished. With this capability the 36 year old Whiting remains one of the world's premier hydrographic survey vessels.
 
 

During its 36 years of service, the Whiting's mission has always been to conduct hydrographic and item investigation surveys throughout the U.S. waters of the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. Whiting began this year's field season surveying a commercial shipping corridor in the approaches to the St. John's River, near Jacksonville, Florida. The ship will conclude its field season surveying in the vicinity of Morehead City, North Carolina. The ship is named for the 19th century engineer, Henry Laurens Whiting, who served in the Coast Survey from 1838 to 1897.  Whiting was launched in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in November 1962 and began service in July 1963.

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Last Update  March 1, 2001 (cab)