Potential Fishing Zone(PFZ)

News: INCOIS has said that the Oceansat Satellite data are used to prepare the Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) advisories on the potential rich fishing areas and provide to the sea faring fishermen in all states.

Facts:

About Potential Fishing Zone(PFZ):

• Potential fishing zones (PFZ’s) are those regions where the fishes aggregate due to an abundance of food and they are demarcated by tracing those regions in the ocean.
• These zones are identified using chlorophyll concentration(Chl) obtained from ISRO’s Oceansat-2 satellite and the sea surface temperature from National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA / USA satellites).

About Oceansat-2:

• OceanSat-2 was launched in 2009 by the Indian Space Research Organization(ISRO) to provide service continuity for Oceansat-1.
• Objectives: a) To study surface winds and ocean surface strata, b) observation of chlorophyll concentrations, c) monitoring of phytoplankton blooms d) study of atmospheric aerosols and suspended sediments in the water.

Additional information:

About INCOIS:

• Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services(INCOIS) is an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
• It is located in Hyderabad & was established in 1999 under the MoES and is a unit of the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO).
• It is mandated to provide the best possible ocean information and advisory services to society, industry, government agencies and the scientific community.