Boaters and water sports enthusiasts now have two applications to help them better understand and protect the increasingly fragile marine environment.. DONIA is a private initiative of the company Andromeda Oceanology which received support from the Rhône-Méditerranée-Corse Water Agency. Nav&Co (*) is an initiative 100% public composed of SHOM, of the OFB (French Office for Biodiversity), of the Secretary of State for the Sea and the DGAMPA, with co-financing from the European Union. If DONIA is dedicated mainly to the western Mediterranean basin, Nav&Co currently covers all metropolitan France, Corsica and Guadeloupe.
DONIA
DONIA is a mooring and navigation application for the general public that offers its users a new cartographic universe allowing them to anchor out of Posidonia meadows (protected marine plant of the Mediterranean). Donia aims to become the "Waze of the sea", i.e. the Community app for all users of the sea, whether they are divers or boaters".
This is the presentation that is made on the website of the designers.
First launched in 2014 on Apple Store up to Google Play, It has seen many improvements until the 7 th current version. Claiming 50.000 users (!?) The DONIA app protects Posidonia meadows and coral reefs by providing an accurate view of the seabed for marine environmentally-friendly anchorages.
Available information
The satellite view has a large number of pictograms designating points of interest – anchor areas, harbours, dive spots, pictures available, etc – from the database and community sharing. Areas with specific regulations are identified. The nature of the grounds (meadows, sand, rocks) is displayed by specific colors.
A tap on each pictogram displays a succinct description and access to a window of additional detailed information.
In the same way, superb slideshow pictures of the seabed are available with picture icons :
Function Anchor allows anchorage outside fragile ecosystems. Several icons identify the quality of authorized grounds, and a judicious alarm function – slipping, tangle, collision – makes anchorage safe.
Navigation
Several basic navigation features are available. The app uses your GPS to locate you. You can measure a distance to travel, and activate the recording of your track. The duration of the trip is displayed according to your average speed. It is essentially useful in motorboating. To complete, it is possible to display some weather data from the ARPEGE Europe 0.1° model from Météo-France, at timespan 3 days by 3 hours range. For mainly coastal navigation, the AROME model would have been more accurate.
You can also display the AIS targets from the network AISHub (the same as Weather4D and SailGrib) and those of the DONIA user community, or your own community (friendly boats) with which you can exchange by internal messages.
Option PREMIUM
A monthly or annual subscription gives access to download SHOM charts by small geographical areas, useful for landings and short runs, and a number of high-definition 3D Bathymetry slabs (currently 230 slabs located mainly between Marseille, Nice and Corsica) useful especially for diving.
Community sharing feature allows you to publish information, share observations on points of interest, and also to send an SOS alert to connected users of the application within a radius of 20 km around your location.
Summary, temporaly
DONIA is a welcome application for its primary function : inform to encourage boaters to preserve marine biodiversity while practicing their summer navigation in a serene way. The issue of anchorages has become crucial in the Mediterranean, regulation is becoming more and more draconian, highly regulated spearfishing, and anything that can contribute to a good consideration of these issues is perfectly commendable..
Regarding the navigation part, apart from the very relevant and contextual mooring alarm function, other functions, distance calculation, tracks management, notoriously insufficient weather data, chart display reduced to very small areas, seem to me to be perfectly superfluous. It is better to leave this to specialized applications as Navionics Boating and many others whose vocation it is.. To each his own work.
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(*) To be continued :
For eco-responsible yachting. Part 2 – Nav&Co
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Hello Francis,
It's a good idea to introduce these 2 applications.
DONIA is very oriented towards the Mediterranean . For southern Brittany very crowded at the moment by many holidaymakers at anchor, There's not much, just 4 Small areas
-The lighthouse of the Four in front of Le Crosic where no one can anchor
-The island of Houat and Hoëdic
-Groix
-A large area in front of Concarneau, but nothing about the Glénan archipelago in the middle of this large area, where many boats pull our beautiful algae.
There is more information in Nav&Co . In addition it is a shame to have to pay for SHOM cards with Donia when they are free with Nav&Co .
With these 2 Applications we realize 2 Great steps towards the active ecology of seafarers. It will be necessary to enrich and keep this data up to date
Thank you for disseminating this information through your always relevant articles
Francis
Tjs also well documented interesting , and QD Mrs. accessible non-professionals. Bravo
F. Brulport