Why the ship needs local expert (the pilot) to park the ship, when the ship captain

already has
hydrography data of the harbor?

Ship captains usually know about their ship and ocean navigation, but they don’t have the knowledge
about the condition around the harbor. The pilot usually knows about ship-handling training &
experience for restricted waters, shallow waters, narrow channels, and in most cases, docking and
undocking. We can’t predict the sea, it can change tides, currents, etc. So to park the ship, ship
captains need a man who knows about the local sea condition, not only just the hydrography data.
Even ship captains who regularly go to the same port, can’t come close to matching the experience
and local knowledge that the local pilots have.
 ADCP (ACOUSTIC DOPPLER CURRENT PROFILER)

ADCP is used to measure how fast the water moved across the entire water column. The ADCP is
anchored to the seafloor so that it can measure the current speed at not just the bottom, but at
equal intervals all to the surface. It is also can be mounted horizontally on seawalls and canals to
measure the current profile from shore to shore, or to the bottom of the ships to take constant
current measurements.

The ADCP measures water currents with sound using the concept of doppler effect. The ADCP works
by transmitting pings of sound so high pitched that humans or dolphins can’t hear them. As the
sound travels, they will ricochet off particles suspended in the moving water and will reflect back to
the instruments. Due to the Doppler Effect, sound waves bounced back at a slightly lowered
frequency. The difference in frequency between the waves the profiler sends out and receives, is
called the Doppler Shift. The ADCP uses this shift to calculate how fast the particle moving.

Bottom-mounted ADCP needs an anchor, batteries, and internal data logger. Vessel-mounted needs
a vessel, a shipboard computer, and a GPS navigation system. ADCPs have no external read-out, so
the data must be downloaded manually.

The Advantages of using ADCPs are:

1. No longer using long strings of current meters.

2. It can measure small scale currents
3. It measures at the absolute speed of the water
4. It can measure a water column up to 1 km long

The Disadvantages of using ADCPs are:

1. The battery can’t stand the rapid ping

2. The pings may not hit enough particles to produce data at the water in tropical area
3. Bubbles in turbulent water can interrupt the calculation of the current
4. Must take precautions to keep barnacles and algae from growing o the transducers.