Hilsa being sold at a market in Kolkata.
| Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI

The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad has come out with a species-specific ‘Hilsa’ Fishery Advisory (HiFA) to aid fishermen, especially off the West Bengal coast.

With Hilsa fish in high demand and fetching premium prices in the Bengal region, the new advisory seeks to leverage advanced machine learning algorithms to predict Hilsa availability at sea, categorising it into five levels — very low, low, medium, high, and very high. These predictions, generated daily, provide a three-day forecast, helping fishermen quickly identify potential fishing sites, said INCOIS director T.M. Balakrishnan Nair.

“The PFZ – potential fishing zone, advisory for this species is ascertained with the help of various environmental parameters like chlorophyll, salinity, fresh water influx, rainfall, ocean currents, ocean tides and so on,” he said post the official launch of the advisory by Council of Scientific & Industrial Research director General N.Kalaiselvi.

The launch happened during the INCOIS 26^th foundation day celebrations earlier this month in which MoES secretary M. Ravichandran, former secretaries K. Radhakrishnan (also former ISRO chairman) and Shailesh Nayak, and former INCOIS directors S.S.C. Shenoy and T. Srinivasa Kumar were present.

Hilsa PFA has been done in collaboration with the Vidyasagar and Jadhvapur universities. The advisories are transmitted to the fishermen communities concerned in collaboration with the local administration in the form of messages and e-mails. The advisory is valid for up to 50 kilometres off the coast and it is the second species specific one following the first one issued for Tuna fish by the institute. A third PFA for the mackerel is also in the offing, informed the director.

Ocean Observation Reanalysis

The second important product unveiled on the foundation day has been INCOIS Global Ocean Reanalysis (IGORA) ‘Version 1’ with the objective of filling the gaps in the observational record by combining models and observations from across the world. Accurate ocean reanalysis products are vital to understanding and studying long-term ocean climate trends, variability patterns, validate climate and enhancing AI-powered weather and climate forecasts, said Mr.Nair.

INCOIS has joined the elite club consisting of National Centres for Environmental Prediction/ NOAA, USA, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Copernicus Marine Service by European Union, and others by producing India’s first 45 years of ocean reanalysis products for 1979-2023 with the upgraded Global Ocean Data Assimilation system in collaboration with NCEP.

“Our model has shown improved performance when compared to the other existing models. It will enable us to have better climate monsoon forecast, long term climatic trends and also to identify the ocean currents off the Indian coast. IGORA ‘Version 2’ is also getting ready,” added the director.