Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) is an autonomous organization of the Government of India, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, located in Pragathi Nagar, Hyderabad. ESSO-INCOIS was established as an autonomous body in 1998 under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and is a unit of the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO). ESSO- INCOIS is mandated to provide the best possible ocean information and advisory services to society, industry, government agencies and the scientific community through sustained ocean observations and constant improvements through systematic and focussed research.
History During the 1990s, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, formerly Department of Ocean Development (DOD), had initiated a project titled "PFZ Mission" and it was handed over to National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad, AP. The project slowly blossomed into a full-fledged one after being spearheaded by Dr. A. Narendra Nath. As a result of this, the project was separated from NRSC and a new organization was instituted to look after it. The new organization so formed was named as an Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and was placed under reputed scientist Dr A.Narendra Nath, who has also conceptualised INCOIS and was the project lead and founding director. Since its Inception in February 1998. Dr. Narendra Nath is the person who initiated the PFZ Mission. The newly formed entity had potential fishing zone (PFZ) advisories as its major project. Apart from PFZ services, the other services such as Indian Early Tsunami Warning, Ocean State Forecast, Ocean Modeling, Data and Web Services Management were also initiated and their products are being delivered to various stakeholders in the country on a daily basis. In recognition of these services, INCOIS was identified as one of the key International Oceanic Organizations. INCOIS renders its services through its web portal and various other devices that are installed at different places in the country.
Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) This is the first advisory service started by INCOIS, with Dr.A.Narendra Nath as the founder director of INCOIS and the project director of PFZ. The backbone of this service is the real-time data for ocean color and SST provided by the OCEANSAT and NOAA respectively. This service was started because there was a need to identify the potential fishing zones to help the fishermen to get better catch while they were at the sea. This service was started by the Ministry of Earth Sciences with the help of the Department of Space and several institutions under the Ministry of Agriculture. These organizations are collaborating with the State Governments of the beneficiary states to offer these services to the end users. This service makes use of parameters such as sea surface temperature and chlorophyll content provided by NOAA-AVHRR and Oceancolor satellites. Features such as oceanic fronts, Meandering Patterns, Eddies, Rings, Up Welling areas etc. are identified sites for fish accumulation. These features can easily be identified from Sea Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll data. The availability of Chlorophyll from OCEANSAT and MOdDIS has further enriched these advisories in the recent years. Hence, PFZ advisories have helped the fishing community to locate the fishing zones with accuracy. Another feature of PFZ service is the generation of species-specific advisory to enable the fishermen folk to distinguish between the exploited and under-exploited species in the potential fishing zones. This enables them to have sustainable fishery management by targeting only the under-exploited species in the fishing zones. This approach enables them to avoid fishing the over-exploited species over and over again. One such species-specific advisory is Tuna Fisheries Forecasting System that enables the fishing community to adequately prepare for the Tuna catch. Being a highly migratory fish, it inhabits a wide range of ecosystems and wide area. Hence the fishing of tuna is a costly affair and it requires resource-specific orientation such as long lining by the fishing boats and trawlers. With the help of the parameters such as Oceanic Fronts, water clarity and sea surface temperature we can trace the distribution of tuna species.
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