Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany

Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency - BSH -
State level	Federation
position	Higher federal authority
Supervisory authority	Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure
founding	1868 as "North German Seewarte"
Headquarters	Hamburg and Rostock
Authority management	Karin Kammann-Klippstein, President and Professor
Servants	885
Budget volume	EUR 103.9 million (2019)
Web presence	www.bsh.de

BSH at the Hamburg-St. Pauli, Bernhard-Nocht-Strasse

The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency ( BSH ) is a German higher federal authority with offices in Hamburg and Rostock with around 800 employees.

history

Emblem of the former German Hydrographic Institute

It has its historical roots in the North German Seewarte founded by Wilhelm von Freeden . Since 1868 this had been preparing individual sailing instructions based on nautical and meteorological observations. After the Second World War , the German Hydrographic Institute ( DHI ) , founded in 1945, took over these tasks.

In 1990 the DHI was merged with the Federal Office for Ship Surveying (BAS) to form the BSH. With the unification of the two German states , the Sea Hydrographic Service (SHD) of the GDR , formerly part of the People's Navy , was incorporated on October 3, 1990.

tasks

The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency is a maritime service partner for shipping, business and the marine environment. The responsibilities are regulated , among other things, in the Maritime Tasks Act. As a higher federal authority, it belongs to the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure and has a wide range of tasks:

• Promotion of the German merchant fleet
• Ship surveying and flag law
• Issuance and registration of seafarers' certificates
• Testing and further development of navigation and radio equipment (approval by December 31, 2015)
• Maritime security
• Publication of official nautical charts , nautical manuals and other nautical publications (e.g. NfS ) for professional and recreational shipping
• Surveying in the North and Baltic Seas
• Prediction of tides , water levels and storm surges
• Monitoring the marine environment by the marine environment monitoring network ( MARNET ), which is currently ten automatic measuring stations is operated
• Tracking environmental violations at sea
• Tasks of marine spatial planning for marine uses in the exclusive economic zone of Germany
• Approval of offshore activities such as offshore wind farms , pipelines and submarine cables in the German EEZ on the basis of the Law on Offshore Installations for the North and Baltic Seas

The BSH is represented in many national and international bodies.

fleet

The BSH manages five work ships for its work at sea . The BSH fleet consists of:

• Surveying, wreck search and research vessel Atair , home port Hamburg
• Surveying, wreck search and research vessel Deneb , home port Rostock
• Surveying, wreck search and research vessel Wega , home port Hamburg
• Survey ship Capella , home port Rostock
• Survey ship Komet , home port Hamburg

Message in a bottle collection

The library archive of the BSH contains what is probably the largest collection of messages in a bottle in the world (approx. 660 letters from the period 1864 to 1933).

literature

• Mathias Jonas: 20 years of the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency in Rostock . In: Hansa , Heft 8/2010, ISSN  0017-7504 , pp. 184-191
• BSH wants to make shipping safer, more environmentally friendly and more efficient . In: Hansa , issue 2/2011, pp. 46–48
• Mathias Jonas: 150 years of official German hydrography . In: Schiff & Hafen , issue 10/2011, ISSN  0938-1643 , pp. 20-23
• 2011 - a year dedicated to offshore wind energy . In: Schiff & Hafen , issue 2/2012, pp. 14–15
• Michael Meyer: New flag law: BSH controls the use of funds . In: Daily port report from January 16, 2013, pp. 1–2 (report from the press conference on the 2012 BSH balance sheet)
• Environmental protection and offshore wind energy in the focus of the BSH . In: Schiff & Hafen , issue 3/2014, ISSN  0938-1643 , p. 71

Web links

Commons : Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the BSH

Individual evidence

1. ↑ press release. In: Internet presence. Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, November 1, 2018, accessed on November 12, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Federal Budget 2020 - Section 12 - Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. Federal Ministry of Finance, accessed on August 27, 2020 (overview of positions / positions on pages 252-254). 
3. ↑ Bundeshaushalt.de: www.Bundeshaushalt.de. Retrieved October 23, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (ed.): 25 years of the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency in the reunified Germany 1990–2015 . Festschrift. Hamburg / Rostock 2015 (16 pp., Bsh.de [PDF; 10.5 MB ; accessed on November 13, 2018]).
5. ↑ Data backup in focus . In: Schiff & Hafen , issue 2/2010, pp. 16-17
6. ↑ Wolfhart Fabarius: BSH issues certification for equipment. Private providers accept approval on January 1st . In: Daily port report of December 23, 2015, p. 2
7. ↑ Thomas Dehling, Wilfried Ellmer: Twenty years of sea surveying since reunification . In: Hydrographische Nachrichten , Issue 93, 2012, ISSN  1866-9204 , pp. 16-20
8. ↑ We will restructure ourselves. Interview with Monika Breuch-Moritz by Anne-Katrin Wehrmann. In: Hansa , issue 5/2017, pp. 90–91
9. ↑ www.bsh.de: Research, survey and wreck search ships ( Memento from August 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on February 21, 2011.
10. ↑ Eckhard-Herbert Arndt: BSH farewell to the Hamburg “KiKa” . In: Daily port report from October 23, 2013, p. 2.
11. ↑ BSH research ship in service for 25 years ( memento from November 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
12. ↑ www.bsh.de ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Message in a bottle. Accessed February 21, 2011.

Coordinates: 53 ° 32 '47.9 "  N , 9 ° 58' 4"  E