Customers looking to purchase NGA charts in region 8 (the South Pacific Islands) will find a considerably reduced selection of coverage available to be printed on demand. Region 8 is split into three sub-regions: 8-1, 8-2, and 8-3. Charts in subregion 8-1 (shown in green to the right) are still available, but charts in subregions 8-2 and 8-3 (both in red) are no longer available for sale to the public.

Below is an excerpt from an email from OceanGrafix, the Print-on-Demand technology supplier, sent to all remote printing agents on March 15:

"Per some recent communication from... the NGA, we now are only authorized to produce the 81000 series of NGA charts. All other charts, such as the 82000 and 83000 series, are encumbered by foreign copyright and/or other agreements and must be removed from public sale."

Customers are to be referred to equivalent charts of international waters published by foreign hydrographic offices (such as the UKHO). NGA charts of foreign waters are typically produced using data acquired by foreign hydrographic offices, so there is a good chance an equivalent chart is available.

This is the second notice of this kind published by OceanGrafix this year (the first was in January). OceanGrafix remote printing agents have been able to print NGA charts on demand since February 2011, when the entire NGA world folio was made available to OceanGrafix. Since then, charts in regions 3 and 4, and now subregions 8-2 and 8-3, have been removed from the OceanGrafix system due to issues with foreign government copyrights.