Cabinet Approves Deep Ocean Mission

Subject: Government Schemes

Context: Recently, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved the Deep Ocean Mission.

Concept:

About Deep Ocean Mission

It is a Rs 4,077-crore mission that will be led by scientists at the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
It is a five-year inter-ministerial and inter-departmental mission.

The five thrust areas under the Deep Ocean Mission are:

Development of technologies for deep sea mining;
Manned submersible;
Development of ocean climate change advisory services;
Development of technology for exploration and conservation of deep-sea biodiversity; and
Deep ocean survey and setting up of a marine station for ocean Biology.
Under the mission, India will build a research vessel specifically for carrying out deep ocean explorations and it will be built at an Indian shipyard.

Significance of Deep Ocean Mission

It will bring together researchers and experts from the ISRO, DRDO, Department of Atomic Energy, CSIR, Department of Biotechnology and the Indian Navy.
It will make India one among the handful of powerful nations that already have dedicated ocean studies and missions, including the US, Japan, France, Russia and China.
It provides impetus to India’s Blue Economy initiatives planned from 2020 to 2030 which envisages a number of researches that will be performed to study the oceans.
It will help India tighten its grip in the South Asia region given India’s long coastline of 7500km and flanked by sea on three sides.