Coastal Aquaculture and Mariculture

Unit 8- Deep water fisheries

8.3.4. Oceans and coastal monitoring
The remote sensing helps in collection of data and information needed for understanding ocean dynamics and for coastal monitoring. The oceans not only provide valuable food and biophysical resources, they also serve as transportation routes, are crucially important in weather system formation and CO₂ storage, and are an important link in the earth's hydrological balance. Understanding ocean dynamics is important for fish stock assessment, ship routing. Coastlines are environmentally sensitive interfaces between the ocean and land and respond to changes brought about by economic development and changing land-use patterns. Coastlines are also biologically diverse inter-tidal zones, and can also be highly urbanized. With over 60% of the world's population living close to increasing stress from human activity and hence require new data sources with which to monitor such diverse changes as coastal erosion, loss of natural habitat, urbanization, effiuents and offshore pollution.
Marine remote sensing organizations in India
In India, the Marine Satellite Information Service (MARSIS) was initiated by the Department of Ocean Development and is coordinated by the National Remote Sensing Agency, as the nodal agency and the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) as one of the participating agencies.
It is important for the local fisheries managers to have access to up-to- date information and cost effective tools for monitoring changes in fish habitats, fishing activities and potential impact sources. The remote sensing technology offers a number of important advantages over the subjective view. It provides a synoptic (large area, all-at-once) view of the earth's features from bird's eye perspective. With the development of modem satellite systems, and improvements in image transmission and ground receiving station technology, remote sensing image can now be obtained rapidly and repeatedly over large areas. Hence, remote sensing has become an integral part of most fish resource mapping and inventory procedures.