A group of scientists from the Pacific Ocean Rim countries formed the Pacific Ocean Remote Sensing Society in the year 1990, and organized the first International conference, PORSEC-92, to focus attention of the scientific community on the applications of Remote Sensing for Ocean studies. PORSEC graduated to global status and is now recognized as a Prestigious International Society in ocean remote sensing with the name: the International Pan Ocean Remote Sensing Conference Association.
The association in general promotes studies of the oceans and related atmospheric sciences using remote sensing technology through international collaboration with the following scientific priorities:
| Conference & theme | Place | Dates |
| PORSEC-92, Interdisciplinary multi-sensor studies of the Pacific ocean | Okinawa, Japan | 25-31 August 1992 |
| PORSEC-94, Interdisciplinary multi-sensor studies of the Pacific ocean | Melbourne, Australia | 25-31August 1994 |
| PORSEC-96, Ocean science and probing | Victoria BC, Canada | 13-16 August 1996 |
| PORSEC-98, Interdisciplinary multi-sensor studies of the Pacific ocean | Qingdao, China | 28-31 August 1998 |
| PORSEC-2000, Interdisciplinary multi-sensor studies of the Pacific ocean | Goa, India | 5-8 December 2000 |
| PORSEC-2002, Remote sensing and ocean sciences for marine resources and environment | Bali, Indonesia | 3-6 September 2002 |
| PORSEC-2004, Remote sensing of Oceans, Coasts and Atmosphere: Development and Applications | Concepcion, Chile | 29 November - 03 December 2003 |
| PORSEC-2006, jointly with International Society of Remote Sensing (first call for papers) |
Busan, South Korea | 1-4 November 2006 |
Apart from holding biennial conferences, PORSEC has extended support to the organizations in developing countries for holding International conferences with similar objectives as that of PORSEC. The association has formed working groups on major themes of satellite oceanography under the organizational structure of PORSEC pursues the objectives in a more comprehensive manner in specific fields. Pacific Ocean Color Experiment (POCEX) and PORSCAT for scatterometry are developments in this direction. Such programs are meant for planning joint experiments over the world oceans to improve the technology of color sensing and scatterometry. PORSEC has also organized a few training courses, especially for the benefit of young scientists and students from developing countries. Other than the conference proceedings PORSEC also publishes selected papers in the form of special volumes of journal and books.
The International PORSEC Association is now coordinating vital studies such as Ocean circulation monitoring, air-sea interaction, global wind field and weather prediction, primary production in global oceans, assimilation of remote sensing data into numerical models, fishery resources and marine ecology, coastal zone management, storm surge predictions, ocean-atmosphere interaction, tropical cyclone analysis, precipitation measurements, ocean water quality assessment by making use of active and passive microwave sensors, scatterometers, altimeters, Synthetic aperture radars, multi-spectral sensors etc.
All of these conferences received nearly 200 technical presentations and 250 poster papers on topics like ocean radar, satellite altimetry, polar oceanography, data processing, coastal management, ocean color etc. All conferences received overwhelming public response and attracted sponsors as listed below.
