In 2025, all traditional paper charts were permanently discontinued, after which the only official NOAA charts are the electronic navigational charts (ENC). The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) set the standards for ENC, including the database of all possible chart symbols, which appears in the IHO document S-52.
This standard includes the (questionable) option to offer two choices for many of the ATON symbols. One set they call Simplified Symbols and the other they call Paper Chart Symbols.
"Simplified" symbols is a reasonable name for the first set, shown below, as they are indeed that, but "paper chart" symbols, also shown below, may not be so familiar, as they do not match common symbols that were used on NOAA paper charts. We have to just interpret the IHO paper chart symbol set as being more like the paper chart symbols we were used to than the simplified set is, which are not at all like paper chart symbols.
The IHO name of "paper chart symbols" makes perfect sense to mariners outside the US, because these are actually very similar to the International paper chart symbols, defined in IHO S-32. In the NOAA Chart No. 1 booklet, the column of symbols on the left headed INT are the international set. NOAA does use that set by default for many symbols, but the ubiquitous symbols for buoys, beacons, and lights are replaced on NOAA charts by their own set of symbols, in column 2, headed NOAA.
In principle that would be the end of the discussion with regard to NOAA (US) nautical chart symbols, because we no longer have any traditional paper charts. But with the demise of the traditional paper charts, NOAA created an interesting new concept in paper charts called NOAA Custom Charts (NCC). These are charts we create ourselves with an online NOAA app, where we choose any region of US waters we want a chart for—it does not have to match past or present official chart boundaries—and we choose a scale and paper size we want, and then we create a high-res PDF nautical chart based on the latest ENC data for that area, which are updated daily. It is then our job to get these printed at the size we ask for, on the quality of paper we want, or send the file to one of a handful of companies already set up to print them. See notes on NCC at stapath.com/NCC.
We can even store a file on our computer that defines the choices we made for one or more specific charts, then if we want an update, we just use that file and do not need to redesign the chart—which can take some time to figure out the optimum set of parameters.
The NCC is a very promising chart concept, now a couple years old, but still developing with clear needs for improvement in several areas. One choice on the NCC that NOAA made (which could be questioned) is to use the historic NOAA paper chart symbols on these charts, even though they are based on the ENC data, instead of using the official ENC "paper chart" symbols. The purpose of that choice was to make these new NCC appear a bit more familiar to US mariners.
Since many US mariners will indeed make NCC, if not for primary use, at lease as back up to the ENC on a computer screen, this has the effect of extending the life of these traditional paper chart symbols into the future, where, in principle, we would have had just two symbol types: the IHO simplified symbols and the IHO "paper chart" symbols. In short, we now need to know 3 sets instead of just two... or we could say, instead of just one, and ignore the simplified symbols. This latter choice, would be equivalent to the US finally adopting the paper chart symbols used by the rest of the world.
For international mariners, meaning those who use more than just US charts, this is not really an issue, in that they have to know all three sets in any event because many other nations still make paper charts, and they use the INT set similar to the ENC paper chart set.
