With the legal implications of the additional fishing gear legislation set out in June 2016 a solution for monitoring the location of your fishing gear is ever more important. The BUOY-tracker will not only save you the cost of replacing your gear and potential catch, but will also save you the time and effort that goes into the notification of lost fishing gear process! 

Marking of fishing gear, retrieval and notification of lost gear

If you break the law...

"As the master, owner or charterer of a Union fishing vessel you may be fined or prosecuted if you do not mark your gear correctly or retrieve or notify lost fishing gear.

The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) may investigate and take action in accordance with the compliance and enforcement strategy"

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/marking-of-fishing-gear-retrieval-and-notification-of-lost-gear

BUOY-TRAK AIS Fishing Buoy Tracking Transponder enables electronic marking of any type of temporary buoy installation (hotworks, accident, fishing).

BUOY-TRAK uses internationally certified AIS technology to continuously transmit its exact GPS location to your existing navigation display as well as warn off other shipping in the area – or if you enable encryption, just you.

Easy and quick to clip to any buoy type and completely waterproof (IPx8 certified), BUOY-TRAK has an internal rechargeable battery that allows it to operate continuously for over 5 days between charges at > 10 minute reporting interval.

BUOY-TRAK is a certified AIS AtoN transceiver which is especially certified and legal for use on buoys. Its tough high quality construction makes it ideal for long term continuous use in even the harshest conditions.

Convenient, easy to use, low cost, certified and with a range of accessories to make things even easier, BUOY-TRAK will enable you to reliably locate and protect your buoys using your existing AIS and navigation displays in all weathers all year round.

Internationally certified AIS AtoN Type 1 – FCC/EU/CE

• Integrated and protected GPS & VHF antennas
• Internal rechargeable battery with quick charging holster dock 
• Ultra low power consumption – 5 days operation at > 10 minute reporting interval
• 5 hour charge time
• IPx8 water and weather proof
• Ruggedised high quality 
• Easy to install – quick-fix bracket system
• Optional encrypted mode

To reassure you NOT put you off.. 

In BUOY-Tracker you can choose to program it either as  AIS AtoN – in which case you have to apply for an AtoN MMSI number from the local authority OR you can choose to use the BUOY-Tracker fishing mode which ‘creates’ an MMSI as a derivative of the mother vessel MMSI and the BUOY number.

Currently in the USA BUOY-Tracker is only FCC authorised in AIS AtoN mode.

HOWEVER, we are working with the USCG to try to work this through.

The USA and Australia has been flooded by cheap Chinese BUOY-Trackers in various brands.  There is a real danger in using this and we believe a lot of the FCC warnings derive from the fact that these units incorrectly mark the buoy as a Class B not an AtoN which is  dangerous as they just look like any other Class B vessel on a chartplotter and are seriously misleading to the maritime domain awareness of sailors. So perhaps worth considering that 'cheapest' is not alway best.. 

The Buoy Tracker is a rebranded AIS AtoN Type 1 a.k.a. AtoN Express. Express was developed in response to ports wanting an easy and low cost AIS AtoN. We also saw a huge demand from fishermen for a buoy tracker that uses AIS. In the absence of a certified device many have been buying AIS transmitters (which are not approved).

Why AIS? Because they mostly have an AIS transceiver connected to displays and so its easy for the users to keep track of their gear on their existing systems, but when we researched this more, the real driver was that the users wanted AIS so that large commercial vessels that are required to have AIS are alerted to the users fishing gear and don’t run it over and cause huge losses – this is a key thing to note about the demand for these products and why buoy tracking systems that use proprietary transmission methods have been a commercial flop. This is where the modified version of Express comes in that has been called Buoy Tracker.

The modifications were designed to make it easy and practical for fishermen to use and to ensure the AIS system principles were maintained. However, because with these changes it does NOT conform fully to the relevant standard, it is NOT type approved.

The changes were:

1) the fisherman/user programs it using their vessel MMSI and the program tool automatically creates a unique derivative linked to the users vessel.

2) as a specific slot cannot be programmed and to do so on scale would be the same as the Chinese non-approved ones, the Buoy-Tracker uses the intelligent embedded receiver in Express to implement CSTDMA operation such that the integrity of the slot map is maintained at the local level.

These changes means it does not conform to the Type 1 AtoN standards when in Buoy Tracker mode.

As such today (as far as we are aware), it is not approved for use in US waters and therefore we can only sell it for use within the USA in full Type 1 AtoN configuration with the user having to opt to select the Buoy Tracker mode and accept all liabilities which may arise – which is why we send you this information now and are very explicit about this.

In most other countries, the authorities have recognised the issues and have granted a waiver to allow fishermen to buy and use Buoy-Tracker as otherwise they are faced unapproved ‘dumb’ transmitters or fishermen losing huge amounts of gear.

See more details on the FCC below: