A new service helps ships change routes, conserve fuel

Shipping companies can now lower the fuel consumption of their ships plying on some key sea-lanes, thanks to a new product unveiled by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (Incois).

The Institute has launched a customised service for the shipping industry in the form of daily bulletins on Ocean State Forecast along standard shipping routes. The bulletins will cover ocean surface information and forecast on winds, swell waves, sea currents, high waves and rainfall for the next two days.

This will help ships to make changes in their routes to avoid sea and weather turbulence.

AK Gupta, CMD of Shipping Corporation of India, said weather routing of ships played an important role in fuel savings. Wind speeds, swell waves and other ocean conditions make an impact on the speed of the ship and fuel consumption.

Select locations For instance, a ship facing heavy winds will consume more fuel than while plying through gentle weather conditions. The bulletins will cover standard sea lanes in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal.

“With these bulletins, we can now steer our ships through better weather routes, which will help in lowering our fuel consumption,” Gupta said, after launching the product.

SSC Shenoi, Director of the institute, said the information would be available at some selected waypoints en route. Besides, cargo ships and oil tankers, passenger ships and defence vessels also use these routes, he added,

Incois also launched other new products, including an atlas of potential fishing zones, an Android-based app for ocean information services for the benefit of fishermen. There are plans to make available the app on Google play store and on Incois website.

Boon to fishermen The Atlas contains data for each of the month since 2003, shown in intuitive maps in the form of frequency of such zone occurrence. This is expected to help fishermen and managers in understanding the potential fishing zone seasonality for their area.

Another product launched was the high resolution ocean state forecast for the West Coast of India, containing both ocean surface and sub-surface information. A fifth product launch was the Buoy Drift Alert System, which will detect the accidental drifting of the institute’s buoys placed in the high seas.

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