Nearly 1,000 times a day, NGA’s Maritime Safety Watch desk receives messages — usually via satellite or email from governmental authorities or individual ships — about safety of navigation issues.
Pirates. Icebergs. Ship in distress. Man overboard. Missile launches. Rocket launches. Military exercises…. The topics vary, and the number of messages has grown over the years.
The 24×7 Maritime Safety Watch desk is responsible for monitoring those individual reports, for decades manually organizing and validating them and then issuing warning broadcasts — typically about 30 to 40 a day.