Chart conundrum

[robertager1962]

Hi all. I wonder if I could ask your advice. We are currently travelling to Cadiz and the charts denote areas which show a dashed line and a fish inside (see attached image).
I have scoured the admiralty key but it tells me that these are fishery limits and I am not sure about them. I steered clear of them on our last passage only to watch every Tom Dick and Harry gaily traversing them. My main concern was that I set up Navionics to perform an automatic route and it avoided them.

 

[GHA]

Density charts on marinetraffic can be useful to see what everyone else does, usually quite easy to spot exclusion zones. I've up to date spanish charts on opencopn, what's the lat/long of that example? I'll see what they say.

 

[robertager1962]

Thanks so much. 37°2.380N 6°47.610W. Also if I am not taking the P, could you see what they say about the firing ranges we are passing through. I have checked the chart and there is no contact and I am just wrestling with my NavTex (hate the thing) to see if it will tell me anything..

 

[Spirit (of Glenans)]

Marine farms?

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Marine farms?

That was my thought, too.

 

[Carib]

Yes, this is a fish/marine farm. I know particularly because we recently encountered one at the north end of Torbay. The rather inconspicuous symbol we'd failed to notice on our chartplotter meant in reality a 0.4M x 0.2M area surrounded by buoys and black flags...

Imray (below) shows the full area and roughly how it's buoyed and lit; our plotter (Navionics C-map) even at high zoom only showed the tiny symbol suggesting a much more localised feature.

 

[MoodySabre]

Admiralty Cahart 5011 - Symbols etc
Number 48.1 = Marine Farm (a different symbol is used for small scale charts)

 

[Buck Turgidson]

Check your position.
That is centred on 37°08.53N007°18.47W
On Imray there is a Note:
Artificial reefs, which may reduce the charted depth approximately 2.5 meters, have been established in areas indicated.

It's a Fish Haven. There are also 2 areas or marine farms to the south surrounded by flashing yellow special purpose buoys. Keep out of them.

 

[GHA]

Thanks so much. 37°2.380N 6°47.610W. Also if I am not taking the P, could you see what they say about the firing ranges we are passing through. I have checked the chart and there is no contact and I am just wrestling with my NavTex (hate the thing) to see if it will tell me anything..

That lat/long didn't seem to match up with the image. Though probably a fish haven, a few fish farms about as well but they are usually well marked. If entry is prohibited then they generally seem to be well marked as well, below from near Faro.

Only busy firing range I remember being busy was south of Cadiz, this used to be continental portugal navtex but seems to have been off air for a while, maybe it will come back to life. Es Portugal, nao?
http://anavnet.hidrografico.pt/NAVTEX/ListNavtex.aspx?Station=R

That was handy, as you could cut and paste lat/long into Opencpn, maybe there are other web sources for live navtex.

 

[robertager1962]

As always thanks so much to everyone for your help. Normally the fish farms we have come across are marked re the attached, and we have come on a lot of these on our journey, but being English I will obey the rules and stay out. (Our major international failing.) No other nationalities seem to bother with the rules.
With regards to the firing ranges I have also been told that they apparently monitor AIS and will contact you if firing, so AIS on and also VHF on tomorrow.
About 30 years ago I was sailing past the Trafalgar range and we saw a flare burning to seaward of us. Thinking it was a distress.flare we turned towards it until we heard the bangs to landward and then saw the splashes to seawards of us, the flare was a target. They never stopped firing as we passed and you could hear the shells whistling overhead.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

You don't need to keep out of the marine reserve with ------------- lines but you do the farms with T T T T T T T T T T lines.

 

[Sandyman]

''We are currently travelling to Cadiz ''.....................and you don't know the symbols for a fish farm ? Worrying.

 

[robertager1962]

Thanks for your concern Sandyman, glad you are worried about me (so sweet!)

 

[Carib]

A few people on here can be gratuitously unpleasant.

 

[robertager1962]

OK I have re studied the admiralty key more thoroughly and these areas (shown in my first post )are actually fish havens. Admiralty key 46.1 & 46.2. Fish farms are denoted by the image I sent last 48.1 & 48.2 as GHA mentioned earlier.
Just in case anyone encounters these.

 

[differentroads]

There are a range of fishing installations in use off the Spanish coasts, from artificial reefs which are no real hazard, to complex mazes of nets to catch tuna and extensive arrays of floating fish pens, both of which are. The latter are seasonal so you don't know what you are going to encounter when in unfamiliar areas.

I sailed across the Bay of Cadiz this time last year and the only fishing installation I had to dodge was outside Barbate. Easy to spot as it was marked by a huge tuna processing ship! Such installations (like the one off my home port of Estepona) are marked with smallish lit yellow bouys. Easier to see at night than in the daytime. On my cruise to the Balearics and back last year, of the eight or so installations we passed only three had gear visible on the surface and were being serviced by a regular stream of boats.

 

[differentroads]

Oh, the people traversing the installations would be, I guess, locals who know there's no gear there at that time, fishing boats working them or happy innocents who blithely get away with what we more consciencious sailors fret about. Caution has worked out fine for me so far and I think I'll be taking the long way round fishing installations of all kinds.
But keep your eyes peeled in their vicinity. Our local one is a magnet for dolphins.

 

[Spirit (of Glenans)]

Check your position.
That is centred on 37°08.53N007°18.47W
On Imray there is a Note:
Artificial reefs, which may reduce the charted depth approximately 2.5 meters, have been established in areas indicated.

It's a Fish Haven. There are also 2 areas or marine farms to the south surrounded by flashing yellow special purpose buoys. Keep out of them.

Yes, I thought the fact that it was between two wrecks might be significant.

 

[Graham376]

Never had a problem with the reefs or havens. Biggest worry in Bay of Cadiz are the firing ranges, which come close inshore as well. Firing times and locations on NAVTEX a few days before.