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Terrafin Fishing and Ocean Data Added to WeatherNet
What is Terrafin data?
Terrafin data is high resolution fishing and ocean data obtained from satellite imagery. Types of Terrafin data include sea surface temperature (SST), cloud-free SST, chlorophyll, current velocities, currents with sea surface height (SSH) data, and SSH anomalies. Data are available for the coastal waters of Alaska, British Columbia, the continental US, Mexico and Central America plus the Caribbean and Hawaii. Most data are updated multiple times per day.
Who benefits from Terrafin data?
Terrafin provides fishermen with unique looks at important ocean conditions detected by orbiting satellites. Unlike GRIB data, the Terrafin information is not modeled data but instead near real-time imagery carefully processed by professional staff in order to provide the best possible insights into ocean factors affecting fishing performance.
The Terrafin current velocity information is also useful to ocean racers and cruisers looking for the very best ocean current position, speed and direction. SST information also can provide information to these users on current boundaries as well as the location of warm and cold core eddies.
Terrafin Quality File
Contained in WeatherNet is a quality file for each of the Terrafin ocean charts. The Terrafin quality file rates each Terrafin chart on a scale from 1 to 5 and identifies the date and time of the latest available chart. A quality index of 1 contains the least amount of useful ocean data. A quality index of 5 contains the most amount of useful ocean data. Of course, even a quality index of 1 may provide useful information if the ocean data within it is of a region of interest to you in your fishing area.
The quality file is free of charge. It is also quite small and thus will consume very little time or bandwidth when downloaded over your satellite connection with WeatherNet. We encourage our Terrafin users to download the Terrafin quality file for the chart of interest to you BEFORE downloading the corresponding full chart.
Compressed or Uncompressed
By default, Terrafin data are in a compressed format in WeatherNet. WeatherNet compression and resampling directly benefits the wireless user by dramatically reducing file sizes. The trade-off made for this reduced file size can be a slightly degraded image but the compression and resampling algorithms approved by OCENS for a given piece of content were only accepted after OCENS confirmed that the specific file size reductions had little, if any, effect on the critical information present in the subject content. WeatherNet does allow you to disable the compression of the Terrafin charts prior to download. This will preserve the unaltered, original quality of the chart but will also increase file size.
MetMapper Digital Overlays
Terrafin charts obtained from WeatherNet can be viewed as static pictures in any picture viewing software on your computer. However, when used with OCENS MetMapper software, interactive layers are automatically placed on top of the image to make the Terrafin data more informative and even easier to use.
OCENS MetMapper is our ocean and weather chart analysis and text display software. MetMapper works with WeatherNet to add an interactive map layer to the Terrafin charts you retrieve. This data layer displays latitude and longitude at the point of the cursor as it moves across the screen image. Because MetMapper can also link with your vessel GPS, bearing and range values between your present position and the cursor's location on the Terrafin chart provide you with immediate feedback on target fishing locations, current boundaries, SSH holes, and chlorophyll upwellings. The map layer also permits heads-up plotting on and annotation of your Terrafin charts.
Click here for additional information on MetMapper.
Using Terrafin data
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