Has anyone heard about AIS being introduced in Canada?

I was discussing it with a friend of mine in Mil. Intel. here in The Great
North.
I thought I would pass it along as a perspective if anyone was interested.

It is generally available knowledge.

He wrote...
........."saw a brief explanation of the AIS transponders the other day. The
driving force behind this is to avert terrorism and to allow early
identification of vessels entering Canadian waters. Here is the flaw. Rouge
vessels will continue to drift under our radar in order to off-load refugees
and/or undesirables. Identifying regular but suspected cargo vessels early
will allow customs to better prepare for their arrival. Given that over 90% of
all containers have transported drugs at one time in their life, the only way
to search is with a team of custom officials which can take up to eight hours
for each container. Human intelligence, which is dreadfully lacking in much of
the world, is the only way to identify specific contraband containers carrying
people, weapons, bomb making material or drugs. You can appreciate the
difficulty when each ship has thousands of containers.
AIS on small vessels is unlikely to be mandated because of the cost associated
with each unit. Also from a privacy point, this would be like putting a homing
devise on every person to monitor their movement as they traveled throughout
their day. Unlike radar, AIS is an active system which means that in order for
me to see you, your AIS transponder must be turned on and transmitting. The
USA have been capturing signal suite groupings from every vessel at every
choke point in the world for a number of years. Identifying individual vessels
with an electronic signature allows them to follow their movements globally.
Unfortunately, if a piece of electronics is switched out or upgraded, say in
Singapore, (great cost) then the signature is altered. Every system has its
limitations."

FWIW.
Mark.
'Matileena'
3270 Bayliner

Mark McCurdy asked:

Has anyone heard about AIS being introduced in Canada?

REPLY
AIS has been discussed and field trialed in Canada and more specifically in
the Great Lakes since about 1994.
I first heard it discussed at lenght at a maritime conference in Montreal
back in 1993. Saw my first demonstration in 1994.
Since then I have written a few articles on the subject.

Hughes also demoed a system at the New Orleans Workboat show in 1995.
Several competing systems were demoed in Victoria BC in 1996 while I
attended a Hydrographic conference there.
AIS was being considered long before 9-11 because of its application to
traffic control and vessel safety in confined channels.

The St. Lawrence Seaway has implemente4d a full AIS system this year as part
of the ongoing efforts to reduce the cost to maintain  navigation aids. The
ST. Lawrence system was also the first place in Canada to implement full
ECDIS capability on most regular users of the Seaway. It didn't take long
for the Pilots to start bringing their own ECs systems aboard in a laptop
package.
As soon as they saw how useful the ECDIS on the "lake boats" were they
started pressuring for adoption on all vessels.

AIS is similar to but also different from the Air Traffic Control system we
have all seen used at airports.
One of the main diffferences is the fact AIS will display all data on the
ECDIS screen of all participating ships.

The huge delay in response time when maneouvering large ships  makes it
mandatory that each captain or pilot know what the other wessel weighs and
what speed it is travelling. Ship's heading is also very important when
transiting congested waters. Course changes muyst often be initated many
minmutes and half a mile or more in advance of the place where the direction
will actually take place.

Knowing wher the other guy is heading, how fast he is mmoving and how much
he weighs allows the ships officers to better predict the future movement of
the other vessesl in the vicinity.

The security aspect of AIS only became apparent after 9-11 when the
authorities needed a positive method of identifying each radar echo on the
port traffic control radarr screen.

Any target not ID'ed by AIS now becomes a "rogue" ship and worthy of
increased vigilance.

Once IMO mandates global AIS implementation, all ships (over a certain
tonnage) world wide would be tracked on a continuous basis.

Between satellite reconnisance and radar surveillance in harbor approaches,
it will be more difficult for rogue ships to evade surveillance from port to
port.

The issue of smuggling using containers is an old problem.  Here in
Vancouver the Port Authority has installed a gamma ray scanner that can
scan a whole 40 foot container in about 90 seconds. It can "x-ray" the
interior and detect voids, humans,  cars, machinery etc. with remarkable
clarity.  Much like airport security screeners.  Even so  the ships are
unloaded about ten times as fast as the scanner can screen the cargo.

BTW, AIS is perhaps most useful as a replacement to radar in known traffic
lanes.  Radar has shadow effects. AIS  can  in efffect see around corners
and behind blind spots on the far side of islands.
One demonstration that I saw allowed two Coast Guards ships to track each
other on opposite sides of large islands in the Strait of Georgia.
Neither vessel could see the other  on radar but clearly saw the other on
the AIS augemented ECDIS display.

Thger will come a time when even large pleasure yachts wishing to transti
commercial traffic lanes will have to fit AIS or else wait until cleared by
vessel traffic Service (VTS) to proceed.
The recent bombing of a French tanker in the Middel east may speed up the
process. The bombing was done in the same wasy as the Cole was attacked.
A small craft laden with explosives sneaked in under the ships raddar and
visual look-out in a crowded area.
Given the congenstion of small craft in the vicinity, the ship's officere
paid scant atttention until after the explosion.
Only belatedly did one of them recall seeing the small craft.

Area such as Puget Sound, Cheasepeake Bay and other sensitive area that are
home port to the Navy or have tanker traffic  wil be the first to see
tighter traffic control and the implementattion of mandatory AIS for all
vessesl transiting the area.

I forsee the time when pleasure craft ( read small vessels ) will be
outright banned from some areas.
This would be an extension of the current exclusion zone around designated
vessels

Cheers

Arild

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