BRIDGE is a system:  it is a computer program, a computer and connections to various instruments.  This system takes information from other marine instruments aboard the vessel and saves the information to a MS Access database.   When the data is in the database it can be presented on screen immediately in useful presentations, and stored for recall and later analysis.  The system is oriented toward summarizing the immediate environment, and past catch information on the computer monitor in front of the person making the fishing decisions - to help make better fishing decisions.

Specifically the system does several things to help you fish better:

• views both new and "old reliable"  charts in the plotter portion of the system
           - including custom bathymetry of the areas where you fish - Marimsys Charts,
           - satellite based gravity charts, both mGal and bathymetry,  
           - satellite infrared (thermal) imagery downloaded on Marimsys SIRS systems,
           - use your existing standard nautical charts without buying any new formats.

• performs routine navigational tasks in the plotter, equivalent to the best computer plotters on the market  

• displays graphically the environmental and catch data that will help you fish better, sea surface temperature, trawl level temperature (netsounder).  This information can be saved in unlimited quantities and is available for shoreside statistical analysis.

BRIDGE is a FISHING system because it does all of these things. It is a flexible system because these features are designed to be used in many different ways to help productivity in different fisheries.

BRIDGE is a program to assist you with your navigation and fishing tasks, it simplifies general ship management and organizes your data to help you fish more efficiently. Frequently fishermen have much information, more than they can analyze and bring to bear on the problem of "What is the best thing to do next to catch the most fish?"   BRIDGE helps simplify the information, that is to gather, organize and graphically display information to assist in improving catches.

Included is a plotter with point and click capacity, the ability to use Waypoints in much more sophisticated ways than have been possible before, and a multi-topic Log. It includes the capacity to scan in your own nautical charts, and new and different types of "Charts".  The program includes a relational database which records information about water conditions, vessel position and catch, as you fish; both to help you determine which are the best conditions to fish in, and to simplify record keeping tasks.

Various types of Charts, or a blank plotting sheet, can be used. The charts types are:

Highly detailed Marimsys Charts. These are bottom contour plots made by Marine Imaging Systems from data collected with the automatic logging feature of BRIDGE.  Marimsys Satellite Bathymetry and mGal Charts use satellite gravity measurement technology to provide the best way to explore new fishing areas - with as much information as possible.

Bitmap scans of normal Navigational Charts, (be sure to check the legality of scanning the Charts that you wish to use).

Bitmaps of ocean surface temperature from satellite reception systems SIRS, and SIRS - HRPT.

Or, if you wish, a blank plotting sheet can be used if the track option, with no Chart, is selected.

BRIDGE puts the operator in touch with the ocean surface and floor in new ways through links to other Marine Imaging Systems technology. The SIRS system for receiving Satellite Temperature Imagery of the oceans’ surface can be used to make thermal maps of the oceans for the plotting background for your fishing. Likewise, Marimsys Charts are made by Marine Imaging Systems from data collected by your vessel while it is fishing. These highly detailed, color views, in 3-D if you wish, of exactly YOUR fishing areas, can also become the chart background for plotting.

You view the plot of your vessel’s position in front of an interchangeable plotting background or chart.  You change this chart in accordance with what you are doing. On the screen can be a Navigational Chart, a Satellite Thermal Image or a Marimsys Chart, each with a cursor showing vessel movements. You change the plotting backdrop to suit the task at hand.  Most system users fish over a large series of their own Marimsys Charts as these provide the greatest detail of the bottom. Selection

between different charts is with point and click of the area outline,  or automatically as the vessel moves from chart to chart.

There is no reason to plot vessel position over blank, deep ocean charts or plotting sheets when fishing pelagic species. Temperature is what guides the movements of the fish and temperature is what you need to guide your vessel as a plotting background.  A thermal chart plotter background

shows the fisherman, with a satellite perspective, where the interesting thermal areas are, and what their shape is.  Time spent motoring around looking at the thermometer is minimized.  The ship's track is matched with the ship's thermometer readings and graph (not shown) to pinpoint the set.

Depth is only part of the story for bottom fishermen. The fine contours and textures of

Navigation is much more than laying out lines on Charts. Navigation is knowing where the vessel is now in its environment, the sea bottom, the sea surface and the ocean layers in between, and knowing that environment so as to be able to make the decisions as to where to pilot the vessel in a few minutes or few days. You select the proper plotting background for the task at hand.  Then with your vessel visible against the correct plotting background for the job, you have all the tools of modern computerized plotting available. 

The Database, Logs, Waypoints, Routes and Tracks

When connected to a GPS receiver, BRIDGE receives NMEA 0183 sentences or the SONY protocol for the Current Position, speed, date and time. The system is also set up to receive information from echosounders, net sounder, barometer, thermometers, ARPA radars, Simrad ITI, wind gauges and almost anything else which emits the NMEA 0183 signal. This information is shown by BRIDGE in the status bar at the bottom of the screen, or is presented in on-screen graphs.

The Current Position and Track is normally plotted on the chart, or if you prefer, a blank plotting sheet. However you use the incoming data on the screen, it goes into the database where vessel tracks from specific voyages or segments of voyages can be recalled.

There are three types of Logs, the Captain’s Log, the "configure it yourself" Log, and Autologging. The Captain’s Log is designed for rapid access to make notes. The "configure it yourself" Log can be set up for the needs of many users and topics to keep information organized. Autologging is the data that comes in from the ship’s instruments. All of these Logs share the characteristic that every note or piece of information in them is linked to a specific place, by latitude and longitude, and, if the sounder is turned on, by depth; and they are linked to a specific date and time. The individual Log Notes can be selected by date, and graphically plotted on top of whatever chart is loaded.

The same position and time information is stamped on each Catch Record as in the following illustration. 

BRIDGE plots these Catch Records visually on the chart to help determine where the fishing was good, and where it was not. This knowledge of where and why there was good fishing, and where and why there was not good fishing may be the single most important factor in improving your fishing.  When you have the answers to these questions, you can determine other areas with a high probability of being good catch areas.  The catch records can be summarized by species and printed out for the time period entered as a Trip Catch Report.

The Microsoft Access Database can be directly accessed with the MS Access program. This makes possible database sorting analysis to determine "In what environmental conditions do I catch the most fish of X species?" You can create custom reports from the database, or use the database as a powerful research tool, which will help you to assemble the data from your past fishing to help you fish more efficiently and better in the future. It is positioning information from this database that you send Marine Imaging Systems to be made into custom bottom charts of the areas in which you fish.

Waypoints, Routes and Tracks can be saved, printed or loaded to the screen. They can be selected by very specific criteria, which enables you to transfer among vessels just those Waypoints that you want to reveal. Waypoints can be saved by Type (Good Fishing, Obstruction on the Bottom, Channel Entrance Buoy, etc.) and by Group (05Mar98 Trip, North Fishing Area, Captain Smith’s, etc.) this enables you to use just the specific Waypoints which you want visible on the screen for the task at hand.

This creation of Waypoints is the result of the relational database. A Waypoint is classified by two variables, not just one. Visualize one column that is titled Waypoints with a list of specific Waypoints underneath, that is an old fashioned or "flat file" database. The structure of the relational database has various columns entitled Types of Waypoints. These different Types of Waypoints (think of them as columns) enable you to mark many different types of events and keep track of them together. Groups (think of them as rows) generally group events by a time, such as by voyage or month. You associate those Waypoints, which you create with Groups and with Types, as you choose. With this you define Waypoints with precision, as being a "Good Fishing" Waypoint from April of 1998. You can then recall all of the "Good Fishing" Waypoints from April of every year.  You display just the specific Waypoints on the screen that you want for the job at hand - no more screen clutter.

To figure out where you are going to fish in April of 1999, you display just the Groups of April, 1998 trips and April l997 trips, and just the Types as: Trawl Beginning Points, Trawl End Points and Good Catches. Or, when you are piloting the vessel, you can select just one Type - Navigational Marks, and then for the Group select all Groups on the system. You want to help out a friend, but not give him all of your Good Catches. You select the Good Catch Waypoints (which is a Type) and from the Groups you select 2 or 3 trips with good, not great fishing - you print those Waypoints or save them to a file to give to him. You bring up to the screen, or print out from the system, information that is precisely tailored to the job at hand.

You can plot these different specific Groups and Types of Waypoints (or Routes or Tracks) over any chart. Or, you can plot them on a blank tracksheet. This manner of defining Waypoints can be used to precisely show on screen the data which you want to see, to print out a Chart with just the Waypoints you want, and to transfer Waypoints among vessels.

You can view a "Table of Waypoints from Current Position". Select the Waypoints of interest at the moment and view them in order of distance from the current position as in the illustration below.

You can select a Waypoint as a Go To / From Waypoint. After clicking on Start, the direction, distance and estimated time to this Waypoint are shown. Also, the calculated VMG (velocity-made-good i.e. speed in the direction of the Waypoint), XTE (cross track error in miles) and the direction to steer are shown. These values are updated every second. The direction to steer indicates the shortest path to the Waypoint and not the fastest way to correct the XTE. The window will start flashing and beeping (if alarm is checked) when the distance to the Waypoint gets to the distance you set in miles. The digital information for distance changes from Nm to Meters at 1 nautical miles automatically.

As you pass over or by a Waypoint, and begin to move away, VMG (Velocity Made Good) changes to red, and the ETA becomes negative. The course pointer is in a 360-degree circle.

If this function is selected, while a Route is active (or one has been selected), the program will start with the first Route point. The "Next" button in the "Go To / From Waypoint" box selects the next point in the Route.

When you must precisely target your fishing set points, you will find this window invaluable!

What is the data structure of the BRIDGE database?

BRIDGE is a computerized Database Management System or DBMS. This is a system which stores, retrieves, sorts, analyzes and prints information in a Database. Further, it is a relational Database Management System, in that data can be manipulated by defining relationships between sets of data.

All of those records generated by automatic logging, and the records manually entered as Waypoints, Log Entries and Fishing Report Records are in the Database. These records, or specific fields within those records, can be used interactively or relationally. We can search for all Fishing Reports which show in excess of 5 tons caught, and have the report give us the latitude, longitude, time, date and most importantly (perhaps) water temperature of the catch. The program looks for one variable, the Catch Reports of greater than 5 tons, and when it encounters that variable it reports a second group of variables.

We can make tide corrections to Latitude, Longitude and Depth data from BRIDGE in order to make Marimsys Charts. We feed a file into the Database with the tide correction over the time period which the sounding were made. In this relational Database the times are matched up, record by record. As the times are matched, the program goes to the sounding for that record and adds or subtracts, as is appropriate, the amount of the tide correction. This continues until perhaps one million sounding records have been updated with the tide correction.

These are the reasons why a relational Database is a highly useful part of your fishing vessel. The program BRIDGE will help you to observe more data and to store it in the Database. That stored information then can be used to produce Reports that answer the question: "In what conditions did I catch more fish?" When you have answers, or indications toward answers, to that question you can try out them out to see if they work. This process of asking questions, and trying out the answers to see how well they work; and of seeing what new questions are brought up by those answers, is what will improve catch, and reduce time, depreciation and diesel fuel expended.

Continually the fisherman monitors the electronic equipment market to determine what new instruments are available, what they can do and what the costs are. He makes decisions as to which of these instruments will assist the fishing effort, and whether the amount of that help to the fishing effort is justified by the cost. He decides to buy or not to buy the particular instrument.

As the marine electronics industry moves to standardize communication protocols between instruments, BRIDGE moves to incorporate instruments into the system with protocols of interest to our clients. As a result many different marine instruments can now be tied into BRIDGE, with more availability of instrument connections coming.

BRIDGE takes the basic data output from the instruments and transforms it into more usable forms to aid fishing.

The decision must be made as to which instruments to connect, or perhaps which of those instruments to acquire and install so as to be able to connect them to BRIDGE at the time of installation. Connection of additional instruments to BRIDGE can easily be accomplished after purchase.

The instruments to connect to the system vary with the type of fishing. A surface fisherman will generally be very interested in surface water temperature, and sub-surface water temperatures will not be relevant. For a trawler, knowledge of water temperature at the trawl is an excellent guide to the species and sizes of the catch to be expected. This can enable the vessel to drop the trawl, determine that the temperature is wrong and rapidly pull up the net, thereby saving many hours of fruitless and expensive fishing.

The availability of these instrument readouts and ship navigation and management tools helps you fish better. 

How BRIDGE Helps You Make The Connections

Some environmental variables, which affect fish, are temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, pressure (depth) and proximity to food, mates and predators. There is not a lot that we can yet do to directly identify any of these variables at depth, we must make almost all of our measurements, either at or close to the surface. Temperature is relatively simple, thermometers are commonplace, even those thermometers which output an NMEA 0183 signal to the Database. Dissolved oxygen and salinity are more complicated to measure, and still more difficult to sample on a continuous basis and then put the data into the program Database. Pressure is difficult to measure at depth, but we have an easy way of measuring it, we use a depth sounder. We don't even think of pressure as being important with a certain kind of fish, we just say that it lives between 500 and 700 meters. And here there is an interesting point, we use a "proxy" for pressure - depth, which is easy to measure, instead of actually measuring the pressure, depth is a sufficiently accurate "proxy" pressure for general fishing uses.

On the surface we can measure some of these factors which are important to fish directly, and make estimations of others based upon the measuring of other proxies which indicate strongly that the related factor (which we are really looking for) is present. You look for the proxy or marker which can easily be measured or observed, and there you hope is the associated type of fish, in good quantity and of the right size and sex. Proximity to food is a good example; we cannot easily detect the small phytoplankton down toward the bottom of the food chain, although we can sometimes see water color changes that are indicative of their presence. But water color changes are not a sufficiently accurate proxy for the presence of phytoplankton. However, there is spectrographic equipment, whether used with equipment aboard, or from an airplane or satellite, which can observe the spectral signature of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a pigment present in all green plants, and is present in phytoplankton. So what we are doing is using available technology to spot the presence of chlorophyll, which is present in phytoplankton, which are a food supply for fish. The presence of chlorophyll is a proxy for the presence of the fish that we want to catch.

Likewise, we use temperature as a proxy. All fish exist within a maximum and minimum, or band, of temperature. Most fish live within a relatively small temperature band of a few degrees °C, while a few species can live within bands as broad as 10° or 15°. For the fish that live within a narrow band of temperature, when we locate water of the right temperature, we have at the very least eliminated a lot of ocean to look through.

Temperature can be used in other ways to find fish. Frequently there is very good fishing at the junction of a cold and a warm current.  At the area   they meet, and before they disperse one into the other, is a zone of varying temperature that is rich in pelagic species. This exists because there is rich food supply in this "between" zone. Some species can be fished by the rate of change of temperature. Say you start in the cold zone, moving toward the warm zone at a velocity of 12 knots. The temperature rises 0.15°C per hour for several hours, all of a sudden the temperature rises 0.4°C in an hour, and then after two hours the temperature rise per hour levels off at 0.2°C. If you have that information graphed in front of you, the slow rise of the first few hours becomes a steeper rise when you pass through the zone of 0.4°C in an hour, and then the graph levels off as you move on into the warm water mass. Within that area where the graph is steepening, at it steepest point, is a very interesting area to fish for some species.

Above we have been referring to temperature measurement or graphed curves on the surface, the same graphing of temperature can be performed vertically at the place where the surface curve is the steepest. Vertical measurement of temperature will also yield a curve, which will decline in temperature gradually as the probe sinks toward the ocean floor. At some point that temperature decline curve may become increasingly steep for a few meters or hundreds of meters, before it levels off again. That is where you want your hooks if you are a long liner for tuna.

Satellite Temperature Imagery, which brings a view of the temperatures encountered over a wide sector of the ocean, is an inexpensive manner to narrow down the area to be fished. The satellite photograph costs much less than the fuel to drag a thermometer around the area with a ship.

The point here is that there are directly observable phenomenon that are related to how many fish are in the area. Observing these factors can get you closer to where the fish are. Then you use your skills to catch fish.

What Marimsys BRIDGE does is helps you fish using temperature, depth and other environmental measurements. It puts the readings of your instruments for these factors (and others) into the database, all the time that you are fishing. You catch fish as best you can and plot the fish as you catch them in the Fishing Reports. BRIDGE enables you to compare the environmental variables of when you were catching well, and when you were not catching so well. This should enable you to determine more about which are the really important environmental variables. When you have information as to which environmental variables to look for, the "proxies" for good fishing, you go directly to those environmental variables.

Meanwhile, as you are gathering the information, BRIDGE provides on-screen graphs and instrument read-outs to help give you a better view of environmental changes than simply noting them down in the Log every hour.

Using Images from SIRS and SIRS-HRPT in Marimsys BRIDGE

Each of these satellite reception systems receives NOAA satellite images of the earth’s surface. These images are in different bands of visible and infrared light. The infrared images show, in real time, the temperature of the ocean surface when clouds, mist or approaching storm fronts do not block it.

In either of these systems, the satellite transmission is received and processed. If the image is to be used in BRIDGE it must be precisely positioned geographically in SIRS. When the image is properly synchronized or georeferenced, then zooms are made to a level where the desired portions of the image are displayed.

That file then can be used directly by BRIDGE as a bitmap to Calibrate into a Chart, or it can be transferred onto a disk and moved to another computer in which BRIDGE is running. Another alternative, especially useful when the images are received on shore and passed to vessels as they dock, is to load the file into an image processor, such as the PAINT program found in Windows 95. Using such an image - processing program, notes can be added directly to the image that may be instructive to users of the image.

Whether the image gets into the BRIDGE computer directly from SIRS or SIRS - HRPT, which are running in the same computer, or the image is loaded via disk, the result is the same. That bitmap file is then uploaded into BRIDGE and georeferenced in the /File /Setup /Calibrate Bitmap section in the normal manner.

One caution with these images is that they are they are flat photographs of a round globe. The greater the magnification or zoom made in SIRS or SIRS - HRPT before the file export, the less the problem of flat photograph of round globe will affect the georeferencing. In no circumstances are these images of adequate accuracy for navigation close to shoals or in-shore dangers.