“We encourage fishermen to use GPS”

What is the Mandate of INCOIS?

The mandate of Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) is to conduct research in the field of Ocean Observation (in-situ and satellite), generation of data products and to provide information and advisory services related to living resources, sea state and early warning for coastal and ocean hazards. This information is disseminated for the societal, governmental and research needs.

What are the main activities of INCOIS?

The current activities of INCOIS are to provide

i. Potential Fishing Zone Advisories thrice in a week

ii. Ocean State Forecast

iii. Early Warning for Tsunamis and Storm Surges

iv. Ocean Information Bank and web-based dissemination

v. To support ocean modeling and data assimilation research

vi. Satellite oceanography research

vii. Ocean Observation.

What about Fishing Zone Advisories?

The Fishing Zone Advisories is one of the most important activities of the centre. You probably know that about 7 million people living along the Indian coastline and are dependent on fishing for their livelihood. The reliable and timely forecast on the potential zones of fish aggregation, based on satellite data provided by ISRO, helps fisherman to reduce time and effort spent in searching the fishing grounds. This service has helped to improve their socioeconomic status. The searching time for the fishing grounds has been reduced up to 30% to 70%

Are they used by fishing community?

Certainly. Our estimate is that about 20,000 fishermen have been actively using these advisories.

How do you communicate your information to them?

The information is communicated through Electronic Display Boards located at 22 major fishing harbours, 200 Fax and Telephone nodes 70 email users and print media as well as through INCOIS website. We provide these advisories in local languages and in local measurements, units for their effective use. The research institutions and fishing associations all make Web GIS.

What is the role of geomatics?

Remote Sensing is playing very crucial role in Ocean Observations. We derive Chlorophyll maps based on our own Oceansat-1 OCM data, Sea Surface Temperature for PFZ Advisories. Sea Surface height, sea surface wind from international missions are also used for Ocean State Forecast and Ocean Modeling activities. In fact, we receive directly NOAA, MODIS data at INCOIS. The large amount of data in organized in GIS and information systems are designed for their effective use.

Any role of GPS?

GPS has very important role to play. We are encouraging fishermen to use GPS for reaching fish aggregate sites based on PFZ Advisories.

INCOIS role in ocean related disasters?

Do you tie up with international organizations?

Any plan to share the information with NSDI?

The information generated by INCOIS is available on its website. We share our information with everybody. As far as NSDI is concerned,, issues related to framework, format, standards, etc. would need to be worked out.

What are the future Plans?

Our future plans include development of coastal ocean state forecasting system for providing daily sea state bulletins, 3-5 days short-term forecast, monthly/medium range forecast and decadal long-term forecast. Apart from this, we would also like to initiate new services such as monitoring of toxic blooms, assessment of fi sh stock, primary production, fl uvial fl uxes, coral and mangrove ecosystem health, etc.

Dr Shailesh Nayak has been recently appointed as a Director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Hyderabad. At INCOIS, he has been providing leadership for realizing the project on “Establishment of National Early Warning System for Tsunami and Storm Surges in the Indian Ocean and conceptualization and development of Marine GIS.

He has obtained PhD degree in Geology from the M.S University of Baroda in 1980. Earlier, he worked as a Group Director, Marine and Water Resources, at the Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad from 1978 to 2006. He has been member of many national committees related to coastal protection, mangrove and coral reef, coastal zone management formulated by the Ministry of Water Resources and Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt. of India, respectively. He is member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun and Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. He was awarded the Indian National Remote Sensing Award for the year 1994 by the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Dehradun. He is recognized as Ph. D. Guide by six universities. He was Member of the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Marine Science and currently one of the editors of Geospatial Today. He is President, ISPRS, Technical Commission (TC) IV on ‘Geodatabases and Digital Mapping’ for the term 2004-08. He has represented ISRO at the International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group and International Global Observation Strategy- Coastal theme. He has published about 70 papers in International and National journals and atlases.