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Request a New Area

If there's water you fish that Bristol Maps has no imagery for, you can draw it on the map and send it in. This page covers how.

Getting there

On the Offline Maps tab, find the Request a New Area section -- it reads Draw where you need imagery ›. Tap it.

The page is titled Request a New Area and opens on a map with a hint bar across the top: Tap the map to add the corners of the area you need.

Drawing the area

Tap the map to drop corners. The outline draws itself as you go.

A panel at the bottom shows what you've got:

  • Area: 0 sq nm -- the running area, in square nautical miles
  • A line under it telling you what you still need

Three buttons sit below that:

Button What it does
Undo Removes the last corner you added
Clear Removes all corners and starts over
Next Moves on to the details form. Disabled until the shape is valid

You need at least 3 corners

Until you have three, the detail line reads Add at least 3 corners and counts what you've placed so far. With three or more it switches to a corner count and Next becomes available.

The 1,500 sq nm cap

Once you have a shape, the readout shows your area against the limit -- for example Area: 1,007 sq nm / max 1,500 sq nm.

Go over it and the detail line reads Too big - shrink the area to continue and Next stays disabled.

Draw the water you actually need

1,500 square nautical miles is the hard cap, not a target. A tight polygon around the ground you fish gets looked at faster than a box covering half a district. If you need two separate areas, send two requests.

Corner limit

There's also a limit of 199 corners. If you hit it the detail line says Corner limit reached. You'll never get near this drawing a normal area.

Adding the details

Tap Next and the Request Details form appears over the map. It opens with a summary of what you drew -- area and corner count.

Field Notes
Place name (optional) The local name for the spot, e.g. "Kulukak Bay". Up to 120 characters.
Notes (optional) Why do you need imagery here? Up to 2000 characters.

Underneath, a line tells you who the request will be sent as -- your username and vessel name, or "Sent with your account details" if you have no username set.

Back returns to the drawing. Send submits.

The notes field is worth filling in

Both fields are optional, but a place name and a sentence about why you need it -- the fishery, the time of year, what you can't see now -- give the team something to act on. A bare polygon with no context is harder to prioritise.

Sending it

Tap Send. The button reads "Sending…" while it goes.

You need to be online. If you aren't, you get:

Offline -- You need a connection to send a request. Your drawing stays on screen - try again when you're back online.

You also need to be signed in. If you aren't, the app tells you to sign in from the Account page and try again -- your drawing is kept.

What happens next

On success you get:

Request sent -- Thanks - we received your area request and will review it. New imagery shows up in Downloads when it's ready.

That's the honest version. The request goes to the Bristol Maps team for review. Imagery is not instant -- it has to be sourced, processed, and published before it appears. There is no in-app status tracker for a submitted request; when imagery for your area exists, it turns up in the download catalog like any other map.

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