OceanWatch – Tools and products for ocean remote sensing in the Pacific Islands Region

Melanie Abecassis, University of Maryland College Park, Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies, College Park, United States and Evan A Howell, NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Honolulu, United States
Abstract:
The mission of the NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch program is
to "provide and ensure timely access to near real-time satellite data to
protect, restore, and manage U.S. coastal and ocean resources and
understand climate variability and change to further enhance society's
quality of life."
The OceanWatch – central Pacific node of the NOAA CoastWatch program
facilitates access to available satellite remote sensing oceanographic
datasets for a wide range of users (scientific community, management and
conservation agencies, educators, fishermen, and the general public). These
users have varying needs and data acquisition/analysis skills. OceanWatch
focuses on long-term global level 4 datasets for climate research, as well
as current datasets for daily monitoring of fishing conditions and bycatch
mitigation.
OceanWatch provides a variety of platforms (ERDDAP, THREDDS) allowing
users to subset the various datasets, download products in different
formats, or simply visualize data and create graphs (color maps, vector
maps, time-series) online, according to their specific needs. For technical
users and researchers, OceanWatch organizes a 3-day satellite course and
provides lectures, tutorials, and scripts to generate maps, climatologies,
time-series, extracting data along animal tracks or at sample locations.
Finally, OceanWatch also supports applications and tools like the
TurtleWatch product, which uses remote sensing information to provide daily
advice to longline fishermen on regions to avoid and thereby help reduce their risk
of interacting with protected marine turtles.