Govt. Plans ‘ISRO-like’ Ocean Mission | 30 Jul 2018

Recently, the Union Earth Sciences Ministry has unveiled a blueprint of the ‘Deep Ocean Mission (DOM)’ to explore the deep recesses of the ocean.

Key Points

• It will develop an offshore desalination plant that will work with tidal energy.
• Also to be developed is a submersible vehicle that can go to a depth of at least 6,000 metres with three people on board.
• The mission proposes to explore the deep ocean similar to the space exploration started by ISRO about 35 years ago.
• The focus will be on technologies for deep-sea mining, underwater vehicles, and underwater robotics and ocean climate change advisory services, among other aspects.

India’s Share

• India has been allotted a site of 1,50,000 square kilometres in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) by the UN International Seabed Authority for exploitation of polymetallic nodules (PMN).
• It is envisaged that 10% of recovery of that large reserve can meet the energy requirement of India for the next 100 years.
• It has been estimated that 380 million metric tonnes of polymetallic nodules are available at the bottom of the seas in the Central Indian Ocean.
• India’s Exclusive Economic Zone spreads over 2.2 million square kilometres and in the deep sea, lies “unexplored and unutilised”.