Buoy Modernization Plans

Changes are coming to the constellation of 5,640 federal navigation aids within the U.S. Coast Guard’s Northeast District, including a likely reduction. But which nav aids and their locations will be determined in the months and years ahead. “The most critical buoys we have are the ones that reduce the most risk for mariners. They mark rocks or shoals, mark the entrance to harbors, organize traffic – 80% to 85% of all of our buoys fall into that category of the highest risk reducers,” Matthew Stuck, the Northeast District’s chief of waterways management, told BoatU.S. Magazine. “Every buoy is important to someone. We know that. But they don’t all provide that same level of risk reduction in the most critical places, and that’s really what these efforts are about.”

As 2025 winds down, public comment is being taken on the district’s revised plan to remove hundreds of federally maintained buoys in waters from New York’s Hudson River to the northern coastal border of Maine. The plan initially announced in May drew about 3,000 public comments from recreational boaters and commercial mariners.

Stuck expects a comparable response to the revised proposal announced earlier this fall, especially now that people will have had a chance to realize the potential repercussions. After the eight-week public comment period ends on November 17, the Coast Guard will evaluate the input and announce its revised plan early next year. Stuck stresses the plan is not simply about removing AtoNs. Buoy locations may be shifted, unlighted buoys may become lighted, and stations may be supplemented with AIS virtual AtoNs to compensate for discontinued buoys. Visit bit.ly/D1Buoy to review the proposed Coastal Buoy Modernization Initiative buoy constellation summary.

Navigation Today

CBMI is part of a larger national effort to “modernize” and “right size” the Coast Guard’s buoy constellation because most AtoNs predate GPS and electronic charting technologies. It is not a targeted cost savings effort, Stuck says, and buoy maintenance costs are spread across cutter support, personnel, administrative, fuel, equipment, and other accounts, so the agency has no estimated annual cost to maintain a buoy.

“The rationale is that these select buoys may be less necessary, and over time, fewer markers to maintain helps ensure maintenance resources best support the most critical navigational aids,” Stuck says.

“We appreciate the need to modernize, but the Coast Guard and other stakeholders need to maximize navigation safety utilizing all available means – electronic and visual,” wrote Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) in a June letter to the Coast Guard signed by King and seven other U.S. Senators representing the New England states. The senators noted digital charting has changed many facets of navigation, “However, prudent mariners continue to depend on nonelectronic and traditional means of navigating, including charts and visual navigation aids like buoys and related AtoNs.”

Public comments against the proposal also stressed safety as the primary factor to preserve some of the physical buoys – sentiments echoed by BoatU.S. “We are particularly concerned that the removal of buoys in challenging areas could compromise safety and navigation reliability for recreational boaters operating smaller vessels, which may not be equipped with sophisticated navigation systems,” wrote David Kennedy, manager of our BoatU.S. Government Affairs department, to district commander Rear Adm. Michael E. Platt.

Kennedy stressed that the Coast Guard’s own annual “Recreational Boating Statistics” analysis consistently cites “operator inattention” and “improper lookout” as top contributing factors to accidents. “Removing physical AtoNs will lead to increased reliance on electronic displays and lessen the time spent keeping a proper lookout,” he wrote.

The Next Wave

Regardless of any reductions or revisions that come from the CBMI, the issue of which existing physical navigation buoys can be removed (and may exist only on digital charts) is not going away anytime soon. That’s because a parallel Coast Guard initiative to review the necessity of more than 3,000 additional buoys in the region will unfold over the next four years.

While the CBMI proposal undergoes review, progress on the longer-range Harbor Buoy Modernization Initiative (HBMI) that focuses on smaller harbors and shallower waters closer to shore, will be announced incrementally, on a waterway-by-waterway basis in phases from 2026 through 2031 at a more local level, according to Stuck. “These buoys can be in locations that have undergone a lot of change in local waterway use, where it’s not clear if they’re as useful anymore,” he explains. While the approximately 1,700 larger coastal buoys in the district must be maintained by Coast Guard buoy-tending ships, most of the so-called harbor buoys are maintained by smaller Coast Guard Aids to Navigation Teams.

Proposed changes to nav aids will be initiated locally at each of the five sectors within the district and focus on hyperlocal navigation areas, Stuck says. “I expect each year there might be one or two areas within a particular Coast Guard sector that they’ll be concentrating on and working through the local stakeholders to say, ‘OK, here’s what we propose. We want your feedback.’”

The district’s geography also includes approximately 4,900 AtoNs privately maintained by harbormasters, marinas, counties, universities, and aquaculture farmers, among others. Most of these are red/green “lateral buoys” that mark the sides of a channel, but none of these are subject to any Coast Guard Modernization plans as they’re privately maintained.

The Coast Guard urges all recreational boaters to become familiar with the Coast Guard’s redesigned Navigation Center web page. There you can follow updates down to individual buoys. Visit bit.ly/BuoyProposal for a visual map of proposed changes. BoatU.S. urges its members to check for local buoys listed for removal, and if they know one to be important for safe navigating, submit their opinion to ­D01-SMB-DPWPublicComments@uscg.mil.

Up Next

Kennedy says the BoatU.S. Government Affairs team will remain in close contact with the Coast Guard as these initiatives unfold in the Northeast and eventually the agency’s eight other districts. “Like politics, all AtoNs are local,” Kennedy says. “That said, there’s a broader conversation about the Coast Guard’s aids to navigation system and how it works for everybody on the water, not just commercial vessels and recreational boaters with sophisticated systems.”