A dedicated Indian National Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) was set up at Hyderabad in February 1999 as an autonomous body of the Department for generation and dissemination of user oriented data products, on operational basis. Near real-time data and data products such as Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) advisories, upwelling zones, maps, eddies, chlorophyll, suspended sediment load, etc., consultancy services to the corporate sector industries, States, central government will be available to the user agencies under one roof.

During the year generation and dissemination of SST and PFZ to 170 fish landing stations was continued. Validation campaign of Modular Opto-electronic Scanner (MOS) algorithms and OCEANSAT (IRS-P4) colour sensor for retrieval of chlorophyll data from the Indian ocean were generated. Action was initiated to set up various facilities such as infrastructure, manpower and equipment at INCOIS for operation of OIS.