Combined with its ability to show not only hardness, but also roughness of the bottom in relation to the contour, MaxSea has become an indispensable tool to many types of fishermen.
MaxSea gives you a 3D view of the ocean floor that is continually updated with data from the boat's own depth sounder, thus enabling you to build charts of the area you fish.
The data created is extremely precise with bottom accuracy down to 1.5m x 1.5m and a depth accuracy of 1/10th of an inch depending on the sounder. Geo-referencing and depth precision of the soundings are improved through the use of adjustments to eliminate variations caused by the location of the transducer relative the GPS antenna.
Automatic filters are also employed to correct for tidal fluctuations and errant soundings created by passing schools of fish.
Advanced Seabed Classification
MaxSea also has an "Advanced Seabed Classification" system option. This lets you identify the seafloor in terms of roughness or hardness. For this program, you will need to add MaxSea's SeaScan module.
The return signal from your echo sounder contains a lot of information that your sounder is not designed to utilize. The SeaScan unit is an additional piece of electronic equipment that is installed between the sounder and the PC.
It analyses the return signal from the sounder and from this determinates the characteristics of the sea bottom.The result is shown in colours indicating different degrees of roughness or hardness. MaxSea proposes you also the widest bathy data coverage on the market.
A tremendous amount of accurate bathymetric data has been collected by MaxSea users since it is the most used real-time 3D charting system in the world. A cooperative data sharing program has created a 3D database that is available for a small fee to all who participate.
International programme
With more than 10 000 vessels in Norway, MaxSea Norway launched an exhaustive program to develop a MaxSea common 3D database.
The same program took place in Holland, Iceland and Scandinavia with very good results.
On the other side Irish fishermen have today at their disposal thanks to the Hydrographical Service's data, displayed in MaxSea, all the bottom information in 3D format for the entire continental shelf that is to say 420,000 sq km in areas of water depth 200-4,500m.
