BALTICO MEETING 2016
Tallinn24 - 25May 2016
Summary Report
1.Opening of the meeting
Mr TaivoKivimäe, FMA Deputy Director General, wished us all welcome to Tallinn and the Baltico Meeting 2016. He reminded that the Baltico meeting is an example of good cooperation between the participating countries which has resulted in a good service to shipping. Hewished us a fruitful meeting and finished by declaring the meeting opened.
Olavi Heinlo, deputy head of the EMA Cartographic Department, continued by showing a movie,based on Helcom AIS data, which visualized the dense sea traffic in the Baltic Sea.Olavi mentioned that the increasing traffic makes our work to continuous improve our services to shipping even more important.
2.Election of chairman
Malin Liljenborg from the Swedish Maritime Administration was elected for chairman. Agneta Hedström was elected secretary.
3.Meeting arrangements
Olavi Heinlo gave us some practical informationfor the two meetings days.
4.Adoption of the agenda
The proposed agenda, as posted on the Internet, was adopted with no additions.
5.Introduction of participants
The participants introduced themselves.
A list of participants is in Annex 2 and on the website
6.Review of actions from the Riga meeting 2014
Svante Håkansson, Sweden,presented the list of actions items from the previous meeting and summarized what has been done.
Agenda item / Description / Action by / Finished by6 / Prepare a paper with suggestions for abbreviations to be included in the MSI Manual / Sweden / 7 Jul 2014
8 / Prepare a paper to BSICCWG with concerns about the suggested changes to water names. / Sweden / 10 Jun 2014
19 / Inform in NtM that light icing not generate a Nav. Warn. / All / Before winter 2014-15
24 / a) Include information that vessels should contact Bothnia VTS before passage of Nordvalen / Sweden / Before winter 2014-15
24 / b) Check routines about ice class restrictions outside Finland and Sweden / Sweden / Before winter 2014-15
26 / a) Include links to web sites with MSI / All / As soon as possible
26 / b) Make a recommendation on the use of DCS for MSI / Sweden / As soon as possible
27 / Next meeting. Decide a date. / Estonia, Sweden / As soon as possible
The items were commented as follows:
No 6.The suggested new abbreviations,which were discussed at Baltico Meeting 2014, were approved by IHO WWNWS Sub Committee meeting 6. After that, BALTICO forwarded the suggested abbreviations to WMO, who approved them all to be included in the document WMO Manual on Marine Meteorological Services, No 558.
No 8.Short before the BSHC 19-th conference Svante Håkansson, BALTICO, sent a letter to BSICCWG with a recommendation to postpone and reconsider the final approval of the suggested changes to names and limits of sea areas in the Baltic Sea region. The BSHC 19-th conference however discarded the suggestion from BALTICO why theamendments to names were approved by the conference. (
No19.In November 2014 Sweden issued NtM 9976 about the changed routines about light icing.
No 24.a) We will come back to this under agenda item 16 at this meeting.
No 24.b) This has not been done. It is however important to have routines as severe winters one day will come back. BALTICO will come back to this at another meeting.
No 26.a) It is recommended that each countryhave links to the other countries´ web pages with MSI. Svante said that he wishes that we in the future may have a common MSI-homepage for the entire region.
No 26.b) We will come back to this under agenda item 24 at this meeting.
No 27.We are here so that point is done!
See also:
7.Presentation of national reports
Each country presented their national reports with focus on the changes since previous meeting. All reports are available on the website
Following brief notes were taken during the presentations:
Finland
Development of new ice breaking management system (IBNEXT) in progress. A new NtM online publishing system is planned to be implemented in the autumn 2016.
Russia
No representation at the meeting but the national report is available at the Baltico Meeting website.
Estonia
The web application Nutimeri will be presented under agenda item 19. VTS are making the navigational warnings during weekends.
Latvia
Navigational warnings are handled by the Coast Guard after office hours.
Lithuania
No representation at the meeting, they apologize for not be able to participate in the meeting, but the national report is available at the Baltico Meeting website.
Poland
The homepage has been improved.A new national Maritime Safety System is being prepared incooperation with the Polish Maritime Administration.
Germany:
Nav Warn that are expected to be long lasting are included in NtM. 42 days after that time all ships are expected to have received the message and the warning could be cancelled.
Denmark
Have an app for MSI. MSI is managed by Danish Maritime Authority during office hours and by SOK, at the navy fleet during the remaining time. Broadcast of navigational warnings via VHF is managed by Lyngby Radio.
Norway
The VTScenters make the local warnings. Norway have developed an app for pleasure crafts, so far it only contains weather information, talking about to include navigational warnings.
Sweden
The new system Sea Traffic,for managing MSI, has recently been taken in operation. A presentation will be held under agenda item 22at this meeting. It was also mentioned that Navtex station “J” (Gislövshammar)iscovering a very busy part of the Baltic Sea why approx..70% of all Navtex warnings in the Baltic is broadcast by “J”.
8 / 9. S-124 (MSI in ECDIS) / Presentation of the project EFFICIENSEA 2
Mads Bentzen Billesø from the DMA held a presentation on above topics, see slides on
He claimed that NavWarn and NtMlargely serve the same purpose, with the main differences being the speed and methods of promulgation. He informed about different projects and groups that are working on the development of methods to communicate and present relevant navigational information to mariners. He stressed the importance that organizations and people with knowledge and interest guide it in the right direction.
During summer 2017 practical tests in the EfficienSea 2 project will take place and Mads invited all to participate in the tests.
10. Current and coming major operations and changes at sea in the Baltic
Henning Sauer, WSV Germany,made a presentation of the Fehmarn Belt tunnel project and the VTSCenter Fehmarn Belt. The tunnel will connect Rödby with Puttgarden and will be the world´s longest tunnel for road and railway. Time for start of works still not decided.VTS will be operativefrom 6 months before the work will begin.
Svante Håkansson, BALTICO, informed that surveys have started for the plannedNord Stream 2gas pipelines between Russia and Germany,.
Svante also informed about a project in Sweden to change the Chart Datum (reference level for depths on charts) on all Swedish nautical charts and ENC.
11. Method and procedure for sending MSI to Baltico
The meeting concluded that current routines work well.
Finland suggested that also meteorological warnings should be published on the BALTICO NAVTEX warning website. Svante Håkansson told that there is currently a link to SMHI but agreed that this could be improved. The meeting agreed that the Finnish idea is good and suggested that it should be done before next meeting.
12. Disturbance to NAVTEX broadcast
Jüri Grigorjev informed that he 2014 got an e-mail from Sweden Traffic about poorNAVTEXreception from Tallinn Radio during nighttime. Jüri made a presentation that showed that the cause of the problem is that Mondolfo Radio in Italy has the same time slot (U). He further told that the transmission equipment is in good shape and that aerial wires, conductors and isolators are cleaned regularly. Jüri asked Larry Bennet, the International NAVTEX Coordinating panelat UKHO,if there are any possibilities to get another slot time. Larry told that changing times is not easy. However he will once again check with Italy if they in facts are reducing power at nighttime.
Jüri asked for help from Sweden to monitor timeslot U from Gotland and Svante promised to support in this matter.
Jüri also asked if it would be possible to get direct access to the Swedish monitoring station on Gotland and Svante will also check this.
UK asked for information about recently happened disturbances which will ease the presentation of the problem for Italy.
UK will inform Estonia what happens in the matter.
13. Names of water areas in the Baltic Sea (General area, Locality)
The BSHC 19:th conference in June 2014 agreed on some changes to names of sea areas shown on nautical charts. Also some changes to limits between areas were decided.
Sea area / ChangeSea of Bothnia / Name changed to Bothnia Sea
Sea of Aland / Name changed toÅland Sea
Northern Baltic / The limit with Gulf of Finland moved east.
Central Baltic / Name changed to Middle Baltic (it is unclear if the change also means that the limit with Southern and South-eastern Baltic move northwards).
Western Baltic / The limit with Great and Little Belt moved south.
Kattegat / The limit with Great and Little Belt moved south
Svante asked if any Hydrographic Office already have changed the names on their charts. Estoniatold that they have started and they have also invited the working group from WMO in the autumn in this matter.
Svante suggested that we should keep the names and limits that currently are used in MSI. A discussion followed and many participants believe that the seafarers will be confused if there are one name on the chart and another in the navigational warnings and meteorological information.
The meeting decided to go further to make the changes described in the table above. The changes will affect Nav Warn, Meteo Info, NtM, Nautical Publications, web sites etc, and actions must be done by many different actors in and outside the Baltic Sea area, why it has to be planned and performed carefully.
The meeting agreed that we must first have approval from World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that they accept the changes. It was decided that SMHI and FMI jointly should address this issue with WMO.
14. Presentation of the IMO/IHO bodies that are dealing with MSI
William Van-Den-Bergh MBE held a presentation of the job in the different groups. He mentioned e.g. the Document Review Working Group which is responsible for keeping the different documents and publications updated, such as S-53 and the NAVTEX Manual. He told that there could be problemsto get enough people engaged and to participate, which often is due to financial problem.
Svante Håkansson mentioned that S-53 is avery useful document which we all must be familiar with. However, he told that BALTICO intentionally is not following all recommendations strictly, e.g. we start each NavWarn with issuing date and time and we do not include affected nautical charts.
15. Meteorological Warnings and Forecasts
Today SMHI Sweden and FMI Finland both make analyzes of the ice situation. Both Finland and Sweden produce ice charts and ice reports for the same areas by means of the same tools. From 2018 only one, common, analyze will be made by SMHI and FMI in cooperation and one common ice chart and ice reports will be produced in cooperation.
16. Routines regarding MSI during winter conditions
Svante Håkansson told that information about the “winter reporting”in Sea of Ålandhas not been promulgated on NAVTEX during the winter 2015-16.The Swedish ice breaking management believes that information on NAVTEX is not needed because information about the reporting routines is available on nautical chart, in ENC and nautical publications.
Finland informed that limit of the area for Bothnia VTS has been changed. This was noted by Sweden, who will amend charts and nautical publications accordingly.
Estoniaisissuing a Naw Warn when a new ice restriction is decided for a harbor. Svante told that new and amended restriction should be posted on the website Baltice.org and normally not should be broadcast on NAVTEXas a Nav Warn. Sweden is however broadcasting the Estonian warnings for a short period but also forwarding the information to Baltice.org.
Latvia told that the harbor masters issue warnings about new ice restrictions. Svante told that also this is forwarded to the website Baltice.org.
The Swedish Icebreaking Management has asked the meeting to consider if it could be appropriate to include information in the charts about that TSS in the Quark normally is withdrawn during winter due to the ice. Discussion followed and it will be an action item from the meeting to look for a good solution.
17. Monitoring of Navtex broadcasts
All countries were reminded that they should monitor NAVTEX to see that the warnings that have been issued and sent to Sweden are well received in the national waters.
Denmark told that they are monitoring and have control over the Navtex messages
Germany told that they have a homepage showing Navtex messages that have been received.
During the coffee break it was discussed whether it would be possible to apply for EU grants for the developing of a common automatic NAVTEX monitoring system for the Baltic Sea area. Sweden said that they could bring this question home to the office.
18. Relationship between NtM, ENC and MSI
Svante said thatMSI, NtM and updates to ENC is three different means of conveying the same kind of important nautical information to shipping.He stressed the importance of good cooperation between the different national authorities that are dealing with these three issues. ANavigational Warning is definitely the fastest and most reliable method. However on line updates to ENC and NtM on Internet have made these methods more rapid. But we must remember that international shipping probably not so often is using the national websites with NtM.
19. Presentation of the Estonian web application Nutimeri
Olavi gave a presentation of the Estonian web application Nutimeri. The application is available on trial, see .
20. MSI on the Internet
Svante informed that the Baltico homepage with navigational warnings ( has links to respective countries homepages with navigational warnings. Any changes regarding the address to the homepage should be reported to Svante.
21. MSI in mobile phones, APPs etc.
Norway told that they have wind information in an appand discussions are in progress to also include MSI-information.
Sweden told that they have an app called ViVa with wind, current and sea level information.
Denmark told that they have the app SeilSikkert with Nav Warn, Wind information, Firing information etc.
22. Presentation of a new tool in use at MSI Sweden
Michel, operator at Sweden Traffic, showed the tool called Sea Traffic.
23. The use of virtual AIS
It was discussed how AIS is used to bring information to ships.
It was found that Sweden and Finland have used virtual AIS to show the buoys in TSS in Norra Kvarken during the winter.However the ice breakers have told that this is not a good idea as the screen gets cluttered why this method is not used any more.
Denmark has used virtual AIS to mark dangerous wrecks and withdrawn Racons in additional to a Navigational Warning.Denmarkhas also made trials to send messages to shipping via AIS but the result of this has not been evaluated.
It was agreed that the use of virtual AIS in this respectshould be seen as a supplement to navigational warnings.
24. Use of DSC
Svante asked if DSC on VHF is used by the Baltic Sea countries to announce new MSI. Hetold that DSC in general not is used by Sweden as continuous watch is still mandatory on Ch 16 and that it is not obvious how the text in ITU Chapter 7 should be interpreted. Unnecessary use of DSC could disturb the navigation work on the bridge.
Finland told that they use DSC for severe gale warnings. Their opinion is that DSC could be of help if it is used correct.
It was decided that this item must be clarified before next meeting. Sweden will take the lead to find out a common recommendation for the Baltic Sea.
25. Any other business
No one had anything more to add.
26. Next Meeting
Svante said that next on turn to host the Baltico Meeting is Russia. He further told that Russia still not has attended any Baltico Meeting. However he has asked our colleagues in Russia whether they can arrange the next meeting. He has got a preliminary response saying that Russia probably can host the Baltico Meeting in 2018.
The meeting decided that a definite response from Russia must be received before the end of December 2016.
If no answer has been received from Russia in December 31 Finland is willing to arrange the Baltico Meeting 2018.