Mass mortalities of cultivated organisms have occurred frequently in Korean coastal waters causing enormous losses to cultivating industry. The preventive measures require continuous observation of farm environment and real-time provision of data. However, line hanging aquaculture farm are generally located far from monitoring buoys and has limitations on installation of heavy equipments. Substituting battery pack for solar panels and miniaturizing size of buoy, newly developed system can be attached to long line hanging aquaculture farm. This system could deliver measured data to users in real-time and contribute to damage mitigation and prevention from mass mortalities as well as finding their causes. The system was installed off Gijang and Yeongdeck in Korea, measuring and transmitting seawater temperature at the sea surface every 30 minutes. Short term variation of seawater temperature, less than one day, in Gijang from June to July 2009 corresponded tidal period of about 12 hours and long term variation seemed to be caused by cold water southeast coast of Korea, particularly northeast of Gijang. Seawater temperature differences between Gijang station and the other station that is about 500 m away from Gijang station were 1 ℃ on average. This fact indicates that it is need to be pay attention to use substitute data even if it is close to the station. Daily range of seawater temperature, one of crucial information to aquaculture, can be obtained from this system because temperature were measured every 30 minutes. Averages of daily range of temperature off Gijang and Yeongdeok during each observation periods were about 2.9 ℃ and 4.7 ℃ respectively. Dominant period of seawater temperature variation off Yeongdeok was one day with the lowest peak at 5 a.m. and the highest one at 5 p.m. generally, resulting from solar radiation.

Competitive power of pelagic fishery in Korea has been weakened by the domestic and international problems such as wage increase and exclusive economic zone. To make it worse, fishing fleet spends more than 80% of fishing time on searching fishing grounds. Real-time information on oceanographic data, temperature in particular, are likely to contribute to raise efficiency of fishing. However, available data obtained by satellite remote sensing, fixed buoy and drifting buoy, limited to sea surface or fixed positions. ARGO (Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography), an international program, has delivered vertical profiles of temperature and salinity in the upper 2000 m of the world ocean every 10 days using freely moving floats. We have developed real-time oceanographic information system for pelagic fishery based on the Argo data which has the contents of vertical profile, horizontal distribution and vertical section of temperature around fishing grounds and searched data can be download unrestrictedly. Comparison of skipjack catch with sea surface temperature and depth of 20℃ derived from Argo data in the West Equatorial Pacific revealed that Argo data are able to help fishing fleet to find fishing grounds and to increase catch.