More than 30% of India's population lives along its more than 7500 km long coastline. Fishing is a major economic activity and India is the third largest producer of fish and second largest producer of inland fish. Locating and catching fish is always a challenging task.
India's scientists dealing with marine sciences, remote sensing and fishery science have collaborated to develop a technique to use the remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST) to identify the locations of fish aggregation. The Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) as a proxy to potential shoals of fish aggregation will benefit the fishing community to reduce the time and effort spent in searching the shoals of fish, thus improving the profitability and hence, the socio-economic status.
Utilizing the remotely sensed data available from various satellites, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad (www.incois.gov.in) is presently successfully disseminating via various modes viz. telephone, fax, e-mail, website, television, radio, news media, mobile services/ mobile applications, the PFZ areas in service of the fisher folk in the country.
These advisories are provided on a daily basis with specific references to 586 fish landing centers along the Indian coast. Over 250,000 fishers receive this information over mobile. This operational service is rendered throughout the year except during the periods of Marine Fishing ban imposed by Government of India and adverse sea state conditions such as Cyclones, High Waves, Tsunamis, etc. This helps fisherman to reduce the search time results in savings in cost of fuel and manpower.

The data on Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Chlorophyll retrieved regularly from thermal-infrared channels of NOAA-AVHRR (USA) and Eumetsat (ESA)s Met-Op series satellites along with optical bands of Oceansat-II (India) and MODIS Aqua (USA) satellites are used for the identification of Potential Fishing Zones (PFZ) along the Indian coastline.

For ease of the fishermen, the PFZ maps as well as the PFZ text are also provided in the native languages of each sector. The PFZ Text provides the information on location (latitude, longitude), the depth at PFZ location and the distance and direction from easily identifiable prominent sites on the coast like fishing landing centre, light houses.

The feedback obtained from researchers working on various extensive validation projects as well as the feedback collected from fishermen indicates that the catch in the PFZ area is substantially higher when compared to the other areas. PFZ advisories were found to be more beneficial to artisanal, motorised and small mechanised sector fishermen engaged in pelagic fishing activities such as ring seining, gill netting etc., thereby reducing the searching time which in turn result in the saving of valuable fuel oil and also human effort.

India will continue its efforts to use scientific tools such as remote sensing and other date collection and monitoring in service of fisher folk to promote sustainable fisheries practices.