Aids to Navigation

The Canadian Coat Guard has over 1,700 fixed and floating aids to navigations.

The Canadian Coast Guard has 55 lighthouses, of which 23 are staffed.

The mission of the Aids to Navigation Program is to provide an effective mix of conventional and electronic aids in Canadian waters to facilitate safe and expeditious movement of marine traffic; to support the protection of the marine environment; to maintain maritime safety; and to facilitate maritime commerce and ocean development.

The program helps mariners navigate safely and efficiently by:

• establishing national standards for Aids to Navigation;
• providing and operating 'public' aids to navigation systems comprised of floating, fixed, and electronic aids to navigation;
• providing guidelines and assistance for the establishment of 'private' aids to navigation;
• monitoring aids services; and,
• providing safety information, such as Notices to Mariners.

Major Lightstations
The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) currently operates 55 major lightstations in Newfoundland and Labrador, of which, 23 are staffed by the region's 69 lightkeepers. Thirty-two are unstaffed.  Eighteen of the staffed stations are accessible by road.

Long Range Aids to Navigation Newfoundland and Labrador operates three Long Range Navigation Stations (Loran-C), located at Cape Race; Comfort Cove; and Fox Harbour, Labrador. The CCG operates a Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) to enhance the accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS). And, there are four transmitting stations in the region, located at Cape Race; Cape Ray; Cape Norman; and Rigolet. This system increases the accuracy of GPS to within 10 metres, 95 per cent of the time.

Short Range Aids to Navigation
In the Newfoundland and Labrador Region, aids to navigation cover 28,956 kilometres of the most rugged coastline in Canada.  The Aids to Navigation Program operates more than 1,700 short range aids to navigation:

The Newfoundland and Labrador Region has a fully-lighted buoyage system using the latest technology in light emitting diode (LED) lights.

¹Racons: Receiver/transmitter transponder devices used as an aid to navigation, identifying landmarks or buoys on a shipboard marine radar display. A racon responds to a received radar pulse by transmitting an identifiable mark back to the radar set. The displayed response has a length on the radar display corresponding to a few nautical miles, encoded as a Morse Code character beginning with a dash for identification.

(709) 772-5195