Merconi — marine life and ocean exploration
Merconi is AnchorQueen's exploration mode: a chart tuned to the living sea
— dive sites, marine-life sightings, ocean conditions, and fishing activity.
Open it from the chart pill's menu — Merconi — Marine life & dive
overlays; the pill then shows the dolphins. It is a chart mode, not a tab of
its own.
What changes
When you enter Merconi:
over whatever chart style you were already using — it does not force a
style of its own. (If you want the teal Reverse · Merconi Reef
Guardian depth palette, pick it yourself; see [Reef Guardian
palette](#reef-guardian).)
sites, and ocean data are live the moment you open Merconi, whichever
sub-mode you're in. The Global Fishing Watch heatmap is the one
exception: it is heavy, so it waits until you switch it on (see
[Fishing](#fishing)). When you leave Merconi they all switch off again,
the heatmap included, so no exploration pins or heatmaps linger on your
other charts.
Diving — Discover — two lenses on the same fully-loaded chart.
(The Anchorage lens moved to the SafeAnchor tab in 2.4.4 as
History — your own past anchorages on a
timeline. Seamark anchorages are still a chart layer and a rail cell.)
The floating legend panels these layers open (Marine Life, Dive Sites,
Fishing Activity, Ocean Data) share the standard chart panel card — drag the
header to move, drag the bottom-right grip to resize, minimize (–) or close
(✕) from the header — see the chart page.
Diving
The diver-facing lens — use it when you are scouting a snorkel spot or
planning a dive day. Dive sites and marine-life pins are the stars
here (they are on in every sub-mode, like all exploration layers).
and short description (from Wikipedia), the common and scientific names,
an IUCN conservation badge where known, taxonomy, the observation record,
and a Resources section with Wikipedia, FishBase, and WoRMS
links that open inside the app (no bounce out to Safari). See
[where this data comes from](#technical-engine).
thumbnail. Use the target button on a row to fly the chart to that
sighting (zoomed in and centred); the fish button opens its FishBase
page in-app. Tap the row itself to open the full detail sheet.
a numbered group bubble. When a survey station reports many species at
the same coordinates, the pins fan out in a small spiral around the
spot (a few hundred metres at most) so each one stays tappable — the
detail sheet always shows the record's true coordinates.
source has, you'll see:
water temperature, and current strength.
hours, and a website link.
Captain's Mark pin toggle.
region — a quiet spot may have only a name and coordinates.
Wrecks
Wrecks are a chart layer, not one of Merconi's exploration layers — Merconi
neither turns them on nor off. While the layer is on, the Wrecks cell on
the content rail opens the Wrecks & Diving panel
(sort by Distance, Depth or Year); tap a wreck for its card.
panel; its sheet shows a WRECK badge and a Wreck History section
from Wikipedia.
on that spot and switches the wrecks layer on.
Discover (default)
The Merconi default. Discover centres on ocean-data points — sea
conditions sampled across the chart — alongside the always-on article
capsule for underwater geography and biodiversity.
come from the Copernicus Marine Service — see [where this data comes
from](#technical-engine).
Fishing
Overlays a Global Fishing Watch effort heatmap on top of your chart.
It never turns on by itself, and there is no Fishing pill on the sub-mode
bar — the switch lives in the depth legend:
90D chips under it set how far back the heatmap on the chart sums
effort.
described below. While the layer is on, a Fishing Watch cell also
joins the rail and opens the same panel.
Turn the same switch off to hide the heatmap. Leaving Merconi switches it
off too, and it is never restored when the app starts. (The Depth legend
cell is on every chart rail except SafeAnchor's, so the same switch works
over the AnchorQueen chart and the Capt's Notebook.) Layer Control has no
separate fishing switch.
more fishing hours.
6M · 1Y. This sets how far back the effort is summed — it is not a
vessel-type filter.
(the vessel's country) with an hours-and-vessels bar chart, ranked by
fishing hours.
layer for all fleets. Pro and Max paint the three busiest flag
states in the window as their own colours — the swatch beside each of
those rows is a colour picker, and the chart re-tints as soon as you
change it. Rows further down the list keep a dimmed swatch: they are
counted in the breakdown but not drawn separately.
one-tap zoom-to-tiles when you're outside that range. Opening Merconi
keeps your current chart view — it never zooms the camera out on you.
are working.
> The fishing overlay uses a Global Fishing Watch key built into the
> app — there is nothing to register or enter. The tiles stream live, so it
> needs a connection — see [If something goes
wrong](#if-something-goes-wrong).
Your own log — catches and berths
Merconi isn't only other people's data. Press and hold anywhere on the
chart in Merconi and the command fan offers two entries of your own:
so next season you know which one to take.
Both open the same short form:
library. They are downscaled and stored on the device.
berth. Optional.
Save and the entry drops on the chart as a small tinted pin — amber with
a fish for a catch, blue with a boat for a berth. A pin carrying more
than one photo shows a count badge. Tap it to open the entry: swipe through
the photo gallery, read the note, or use the ⋯ menu to Edit the
title and note or Delete it. The + in the entry's header adds more
photos later.
> These entries stay on your device. Nothing is uploaded, shared, or
synced — deleting an entry removes its photos from the device too.
Where Merconi's data comes from
Merconi's exploration layers are live, networked services — it queries
public marine databases on demand and caches the results per region to
disk so a spot you've already viewed still loads when you're offline. None
of these layers is bundled or pre-computed on the device; an empty layer
usually means no network or no records for that area, not a bug.
Marine life — OBIS + WoRMS
species occurrence pins. AnchorQueen queries the live OBIS web API for
records inside the visible region (no account needed) and caches each
region to disk. Tapping a pin shows the species, where and when it was
recorded, and a link to the source record.
common (vernacular) names in many languages, an IUCN Red List
conservation badge where one exists, a rough maximum size, an
alien/invasive flag, and — for fish — a link to its FishBase page.
Fishing effort — Global Fishing Watch
The fishing layer overlays a commercial fishing-effort heatmap from
Global Fishing Watch (GFW), rendered as raster (PNG) tiles streamed
straight onto the chart — not vector contours drawn on the device. Effort
is summed over the time window you choose and broken down by the vessel's
flag state (country). The app carries its own GFW key, so there is
nothing to set up.
Ocean conditions — Copernicus Marine Service
Discover's ocean-data layer streams high-resolution ocean grids from the
Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS), fetched on demand for the visible
area. The underlying model publishes 6-hourly time steps (not minute-
by-minute), so values update on that cadence. Layers include sea surface
temperature, currents (speed and direction), and related fields useful for
drift diving and route planning.
Step-by-Step Exploration Guidance
Planning a Dive Day
Avoiding Active Fishing Zones
Reef Guardian palette
Reef Guardian is a teal-and-cyan depth palette, not a base map and
not something Merconi turns on for you. If you want it, open the [Chart
Layers panel](chart.html#layers) and choose Reverse · Merconi Reef
Guardian under the depth-palette picker. It pairs the inverted-luminance
soundings with bright shallow water, which reads well over coastal dive
areas. Because it's a normal palette choice, it sticks until you change it
back — in any tab, not just Merconi.
Tips
and a clear sea state make a real difference for diving or fishing.
curious starting point, not a guarantee.
If something goes wrong
built-in Global Fishing Watch key did not load. There is nothing to enter;
update AnchorQueen, and contact support if it persists.
(7D / 30D), check you're between roughly zoom 2 and 12 (use the panel's
zoom-to-tiles button), and confirm you have a network connection — the
tiles stream live.
services. With no network connection, regions you haven't visited
before come back empty; a region you've already loaded is served from
the on-device cache. Move on or zoom back to a cached area.
sites are sparser in some areas; zoom out for context.