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DEEP OCEAN MISSION            

24th January, 2022

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Context

  • Chief of the Naval Staff, and the Government stakeholders discussed the modalities to deepen cooperation in "Deep Ocean Mission" which is to be the torchbearer of India's "Blue Economy".

About

  • Deep Ocean mission is an initiative to undertake the deep ocean exploration focused on India's exclusive economic zones and continental shelf.
  • It is under Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).

Objective

  • It aims to search for deep-sea resources and minerals, flora and fauna, including microbes, and studying ways to sustainably utilise them.

Deep Ocean Mission includes:

  • Developing systems for deepsea mining, launching a manned submersible.
  • Deep-ocean exploration, including purchase of a vessel for this.
  • Deep-ocean biodiversity studies, bio prospecting.
  • Establishing a research facility in Goa for marine biology and engineering.
  • Undertaking climate change surveys of seas around India.
  • Making ocean thermal energy conservation efficacious.
  • Generates power from the difference in temperatures .

Components

There are six components to the programme.

 (1) Development of Technologies for Deep Sea Mining, and Manned Submersible:

  • A manned submersible will be developed to carry three people to a depth of 6000 metres in the ocean with suite of scientific sensors and tools for mining Polymetallic Nodules.

 (2) Development of Ocean Climate Change Advisory Services:

  • It entails developing a suite of observations and models to understand and provide future projections of important climate variables on seasonal to decadal time scales.

 

(3) Technological innovations for exploration and conservation of deep-sea biodiversity

  • Bio-prospecting of deep-sea flora and fauna including microbes and studies on sustainable utilization of deep-sea bio-resources will be the main focus.
  • This component will support the Blue Economy priority area of Marine Fisheries and allied services.

 

(4) Deep Ocean Survey and Exploration

  • To explore and identify potential sources of hydrothermal minerals that are sources of precious metals formed from the earth’s crust along the Indian Ocean mid-oceanic ridges.

 

(5) Energy and freshwater from the Ocean

  • Involves studying and preparing detailed engineering design for offshore Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) powered desalination plants.

 

(6) Advanced Marine Station for Ocean Biology

  • Aimed at development of human capacity and enterprise in ocean biology and engineering.

 

Importance

  • India’s Exclusive Economic Zone spreads over 2.2 million square kilometers.
  • India has been allotted a site of 75,000 square kilometres in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) by the UN International Sea Bed Authority for exploitation of polymetallic nodules (PMN).
  • These are rocks scattered on the seabed containing iron, manganese, nickel and cobalt.
  • 380 million metric tonnes of polymetallic nodules are available at the bottom of the seas in the Central Indian Ocean.
  • A fraction of that reserve can meet the energy requirement of India for the next 100 years.

 

Samudrayaan Project under the Deep Ocean Mission

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1791489