Aids to Navigation Team Kodiak

Welcome to Kodiak, Alaska

The city of Kodiak is on Kodiak Island located approximately 150 miles southwest of Anchorage. The population of Kodiak, Coast Guard Base, and other surrounding villages totals approximately 13,900 people. The size of Kodiak Island is approximately 3,588 square miles. Visit http://www.kodiak.org/ for more information about Kodiak and its surrounding communities.

Our Mission

Here at Aids to Navigation Team (ANT) Kodiak, we currently service beacons, lighted and un-lighted, throughout most of Alaska. A great majority of our beacons are serviced with the assistance of Air Station Kodiak. In correlation with the air station, we service our aids by way of the HH-60J model helicopter. We are currently responsible for ensuring the proper operation of 71 beacons throughout most of Alaska. 42 of these 71 beacons are serviced between the months of May and July, when we take our annual North Slope trip.

The information below was taken from the U.S. Coast Guard Aids to Navigation System:

The waters of the United States and its territories are marked to assist navigation by the U.S. Aids to Navigation System. This system employs a simple arrangement of colors, shapes, numbers and light characteristics to mark navigable channels, waterways and obstructions adjacent to these.

Aids to Navigation can provide a boater with the same type of information drivers get from street signs, stop signals, road barriers, detours and traffic lights. These aids may be anything from lighted structures, beacons, day markers, range lights, fog signals and landmarks to floating buoys. Each has a purpose and helps in determining location, getting from one place to another or staying out of danger. The goal of the U.S. Aids to Navigation System is to promote safe navigation on the waterway.

The U.S. Aids to Navigation System is intended for use with Nautical Charts. Charts are one of the most important tools used by boaters for planning trips and safely navigating waterways. Charts show the nature and shape of the coast, buoys and beacons, depths of water, land features, directional information, marine hazards and other pertinent information. This valuable information cannot be obtained from other sources, such as a road map or atlas.

The primary components of the U.S. Aids to Navigation System are beacons and buoys.

Beacons are aids to navigation structures that are permanently fixed to the earth's surface. They range from lighthouses to small, single-pile structures and may be located on land or in the water. Lighted beacons are called lights; unlighted beacons are called day beacons. Beacons exhibit a daymark to make them readily visible and easily identifiable against background conditions. Generally, the daymark conveys to the boater, during daylight hours, the same significance as does the aid's light or reflector at night.

Buoys are floating aids that come in many shapes and sizes. They are moored to the seabed by concrete sinkers with chain or synthetic rope moorings of various lengths connected to the buoy body. They are intended to convey information to the boater by their shape or color, by the characteristics of a visible or audible signal, or a combination of two or more such features.