ESSO - Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services

Overview:

Fish account for approximately 7% of the world's total food supply, and is one of the major source of food in developing countries. Around half a billion people gain their livelihood from harvesting the oceans. Locating and catching fish, is however, becoming a challenging task as fish stocks dwindle and scattered, thus increasing the search time, cost and effort. Fishes are known to react to changes in the surrounding environmental conditions and migrate to areas where favorable environmental conditions (temperature, salinity, etc.) exist. Availability of food (chlorophyll) is also an important factor that control their occurrence, abundance and migrations in the sea. Indirect methods for monitoring the above parameters such as SST and Phytoplankton Pigments (Chlorophyll-a) at sea surface from satellites is found as ideal. Concerted efforts are required for identifying potential fishing zones to help fishermen to locate fish stocks and to increase the catch per unit effort. Over the past decade, India has developed a methodology to locate potential fishing zones using satellite-derived information on Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and chlorophyll. The satellite imageries are integrated in real-time at ESSO-INCOIS, to generate and disseminate the Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) Advisories for the Indian fishing community on daily basis. These advisories have helped in reducing search time up to 70% and resulting in significant increase in catch per unit effort and net economic benefit. Information on the state of the ocean surrounding the subcontinent is vital for the well-being of the people as well as for the socio-economic development of the country. The marine activities ranges from conventional fishing to high-tech oil and natural gas exploration; transportation of goods to search and rescue operations in the high seas. Prior information of the state of the ocean would highly benefit these activities and ensure the safety of all those who venture into the sea. Keeping this in mind, ESSO-INCOIS has operationalised an Indian Ocean Forecasting System (INDOFOS), which is capable of predicting the surface and subsurface features of the Indian Ocean well in advance. As part of this, ESSO-INCOIS is providing forecasts of Wave height and direction, Sea surface currents, Sea surface Temperature, Mixed Layer Depth, Depth of the 20 degree isotherm on 3 to 6 hourly basis on operational mode. Keeping in view of the critical nature of this information that helps in improving the livelihood of the fishermen community and safety of the sea-going population, a short course on "Remote Sensing of Potential Fishing Zones and Ocean State Forecast" has been proposed under Indo-Bangladesh Bilateral cooperation. The scheduled duration for the Short course is 10-13 February, 2020 at ESSO-INCOIS, Hyderabad.

Aims and Objectives

• Training on the Remote sensing techniques used for PFZ.
• To familiarize about Ocean colour Understand the data and method employed for PFZ generation.
• Perform atmospheric correction of ocean color observations
• Understanding the Ocean State Forecasting for fishermen
• Exposure to PFZ products and services of INCOIS.
• Provide hands on to generate PFZ lines by the officers.

Learning Outcomes

• Satellite data acquisition and processing.
• Remote Sensing applications for fisheries (PFZ)
• Ocean State Forecast (OSF) and product generation
• Lab-sessions on Satellite Data processing, interpretation of imageries for generation of PFZ advisories, retrieval of OSF products, etc.

Target Audience

Target audiences include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Officers from Bangladesh approved for the visit under the research project "Establishment of Geographic Information System of the Coastal Areas of Bangladesh and Marine Fishing Zones Identification System Based on Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques" approved by the Government of Bangladesh (Ministry of Defence) and implemented by SPARRSO.

Application Process :

Only by invitation

Course Dates :

Faculty Members :

• Dr. TVS Udaya Bhaskar
• Mr. M Nagara Kumar
• Dr. N. Srinivasa Rao
• Dr. Hari Kumar
• Dr. Aneesh Lotliker
• Mr. Alakes Samanta
• Mr. RS Mahendra
• Ms. Naga Swetha
• Dr. Nimith Kumar
• Dr. Sourav Maity
• Mr. S.J. Prasad
• Mr. P. Ramakrishna Phani
• Mr. Kaviyazhahu



For Any questions please contact:

• Dr.TVS Udaya Bhaskar

  Scientist 'F', Head, Training and Programme Planning and Management Group (TPG)
  E-mail:(itcoocean@incois.gov.in/uday@incois.gov.in)

Agenda / Programme