The background and spring board for the Oceantemp™ you see today actually started back in the mid- 80's. The owner and founder of Oceantemp™ Satellite Imaging, Frederick Spinelli Jr. was, and still is (when time permits), an avid offshore fisherman who had studied and experimented with Satellite imagery for a number of years, and eventually started producing custom charts for himself and friends to use on offshore fishing trips.

The "free" custom chart activity was getting so popular that In 1994 a small business was started selling chart products on a regular basis. Back then, products were color enhanced low resolution 4/km images that were printed out on a color printer and mailed out to customers three times per week. Charts were already two to three days old once the customers received them! But yes... they still worked! 

Soon after, Oceantemp™ stopped mailing charts and the use of an extensive, fully automated "fax back" system that needed the full resources of an entire computer and 6 phone lines was employed. The fax back system was a fantastic leap for the business.  Images were fed into the fax-back computer once per day and customers simply called in and received their chart instantly by fax, no matter how far away they were.

The original color products also, now had to be changed over and converted into black and white "isotherm" charts. The final results were however quite professional in appearance and worked as well as the color charts. The charts were now "same day" products because the costly and timely mailings had been eliminated. Also charts were now available every day!

The cost of faxing so many charts at long distance rates however was quite expensive so the price of a subscription was actually twice as expensive of what Oceantemp™ charges now! Much of the cost was the phone bills!

It is about this time 1996 that Oceantemp™ graduated to using only high resolution AVHRR/HRPT 1/km Satellite imagery and no longer used our ever faithful but outdated, FM receiver and antennas. Oceantemp™ was able get direct access to high quality but very expensive imagery and therefore had to raise the already high price even higher to around $350 for a season subscription. The result  was, however, the most accurate and professional product that the company had offered to date and it worked like hell!

In year 2000 Oceantemp™ "crossed over" and went online. The "fax back" system was placed in mothballs and no one ever never looked back. The benefit of an internet based business of this type was immediately apparent and the exorbitant expense of faxing day and night was immediately and permanently discarded!  Oceantemp™, in turn, passed the savings on to customers by lowering the subscription price all the way down to where it has remaines to this day!  We were also able to go back to a full color chart product that customers could access instantly. We had at that time 5 separate area charts in the NE region during our first season on the web. One chart set was offered per day.

Speaking of price, at the time of our transition over to the internet, Oceantemp™ could have set a much higher base price for services however when we actually saw the exorbitant fees some other providers were charging for similar online based services we knew that it would just be a matter of time before many folks would stop paying those fees and say, "enough"!  Most of our current customers "were" paying those fees and now do not!

In 2001 we still serviced the same sized N/E region however in a direct response from visitors and customers to have more detail we turned our 5 areas into 10 within the "same Geographic region".  The change resulted in extremely detailed areas with twice the resolution. The change was an instant success and we were flooded with e-mails thanking us for the change. we also enhanced the fathom lines on all charts to match those of official NOAA charts. To this day, no other provider has better resolution on their products.

In 2002 Oceantemp™ transacted a vast amount of improvements . For the first time, we were able to offer our charts with temperature values actually printed onto our chart products. This was not an easy feat but turned out to be another great reason for selecting our products. We also upgraded all our original Image processing software to more enhanced (and expensive) highly accurate versions that produced fantastic visual and detailed results. Oceantemp™ started producing on average two chart sets per day during this time at about  60% of the time.

Also, for the first time, we introduced a simple to use chart viewing program (called Oceanview) that allowed constant mouse driven latitude and longitude readouts along with constant temperature readouts and an easy way to print charts so that they covered an entire sheet of paper thus appearing 30% larger upon print out compared to online printed results. The new chart viewer also plotted courses. We also added an extra area  (area 5B) as per requests from many Montauk and Southern New England customers and visitors. Our total number of individual chart areas went from ten, to now eleven.

In 2003 the Chart viewing program was upgraded again and scale sizing was adjusted on the individual area charts. New for the 2004 season is a much more advanced Oceanview chart viewer that can automatically save and store any number of downloaded charts on the users computer automatically. Customers no longer need to rename chart files for storage and re-name them back to view on the program. The program does it all silently, behind the scenes! We are also planning to start service in Florida later on this year. During this year chart production was twice per day 95% of the time.

Over the 2004 Winter, we have achieved our goal of fully redundant systems across the board. This measure was yet, another large expense, however it will greatly lessen the potential of any down time caused by system failures. Our price remained the same! At the same time during 2004 we researched and implemented an all new way to enhance our chart products so that every pixel of detail literally exploded on the screen producing some of most clear and detailed charts anyone has ever seen.

Over the years the Oceantemp™ has listened to comments by customers and visitors alike, and have made many changes as a direct result of hearing what people had to say. Needless to say, our listening and responses have proved to be a very successful strategy.

In 2009 we made a big leap from static non-user interactive chartmaps to a fully interactive (Google type) mapping interface that did all the things that the old Oceanview program did however now , live, online and fully user interactive. No desktop programs are needed any longer

Our last endeavor in 2010 saw the addition of MODIS Chlorophyll (Ocean color charts) that were enhanced with our proprietary enhancement steps implemented in our processing software.

We have currently (April 2012) hired a contractor to completely re engineer our entire mapping interface so that it will be completely I-phone. I-pad and Android compatible without the need for any external applications at all! The new Interface will also have many new functions and exciting additions. real time GPS tracking on the charts via smart phones are also planned for June 2012.

As has been the case with our constantly evolving business, we will continue to review our products and procedures to see if anything can be improved and we will improve those things once we know we can. We will also continue to listen and to do our best to provide a service who's accuracy will continue to be second to none while still maintaining a reasonable price that everyone can afford. Join us and find out why nearly half our customers are professional charter boat captains.

Fred Spinelli
President
Oceantemp™ Satellite Imaging

732 252 6116