If you have a folded paper chart in a locker on your boat, it is worth knowing that nobody is printing its replacement.
Coast Survey states it plainly: "NOAA has sunset its traditional paper and raster nautical charts." Sunsetting, in their words, "is a term that refers to purposely and systematically phasing out a product or service" — so this was neither sudden nor an accident. NOAA published its intention in the Federal Register in 2019, and "the raster sunset program was completed in December of 2024 with the cancellation of the last of NOAA's 1,007 paper charts."
What exactly went away
More than the paper. Coast Survey lists the whole family as cancelled:
- Paper nautical charts, formerly printed and distributed through NOAA's certified print-on-demand chart agents.
- Raster navigational charts (NOAA RNC) — "full-size, geo-referenced, digital images of NOAA paper nautical charts", also called BSB format.
- Full-size nautical chart PDF images.
- BookletCharts — "reduced-size replicas of POD charts, divided into several 8.5"x11" PDF pages."
- The RNC tile service and related raster services.
If you have been downloading a free PDF chart of your bay each season, that is the product that stopped.
Why a picture of a chart is not a chart
The distinction that explains the whole decision is what "raster" means. Coast Survey: raster charts "are composed of a grid of columns and rows of color pixels — or dots of ink on paper charts — which form the text, linework, and other symbols that make up the chart."
The consequence follows: "the scale, symbolization, text placement, and orientation of the chart is fixed when the chart is compiled."
A raster chart is a picture. Zoom in and you get bigger pixels, not more detail; the soundings shown are the ones someone chose to print at that scale, in that place, facing that way.
What replaced it
The electronic navigational chart, or ENC — a database rather than a picture. Coast Survey says sunsetting the old products "enabled NOAA to focus resources on improving the coverage and content of its electronic navigational chart (ENC) data", and notes that ENCs "are produced by scores of countries and used by mariners throughout the world for navigation."
Because an ENC is data, the display is decided by the device rather than the printer: it can redraw at any scale, show or hide categories of information, and be updated without reprinting anything.
What this means on your boat
Three practical consequences, in order of how much they matter:
Your old paper chart is not being corrected. It was accurate when printed, and every change since — a shifted channel, a moved buoy, a new obstruction — is not on it. That is a reason to treat it as a backup rather than a reference.
What your plotter or app shows is a rendering of chart data, not the chart itself. Different products draw the same ENC differently, and some use their own cartography built on top of it. Worth knowing which yours is, and when it was last updated — that date is the thing to check, not the brand.
Official data is still free. The ENC data itself is public. Our own chart viewer draws NOAA charts, so you can see the official depths, channels, buoys and hazards for the water you are fishing.
What a chart still will not tell you
A chart shows the bottom and the fixed hazards. It does not know today's wind, today's tide, or what the water will be doing when you want to come home — and those are what turn a charted route into a bad afternoon. Check conditions on the trip planner before you go, and take the gear you are required to carry whatever the chart says.