Deep Ocean Mission gets Rs 600 crore

Deep Ocean Mission gets Rs 600 crore

Subject : Geography

Section: Economic Geography

Concept :

• The Centre’s Deep Ocean Mission, which aims to explore marine biodiversity for the sustainable use of resources, has been allocated Rs 600 crore in the Union Budget 2023-2024.
• The government has doubled the allocation from last year’s revised fund of Rs 300 crore.
• The ministry aims to allot money to a myriad of activities such as a manned submersible, ship-building, exploration and conservation of deep-sea biodiversity and identification of mineral deposits in the deep ocean.

Deep Ocean Mission

• The cost of the Mission has been estimated at Rs. 4,077 crore over a five-year period and will be implemented in phases.
• MoES will be the nodal ministry implementing this multi-institutional ambitious mission.
• It will be a mission mode project to support the Blue Economy Initiatives of the Government of India.
• Blue Economy is the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.
• The technology and expertise needed in such missions is now available with only five countries – US, Russia, France, Japan and China.
• India will now be the sixth country to have it.

Major Components:

• Development of Technologies for Deep Sea Mining, and Manned Submersible:
• A manned submersible will be developed to carry three people to a depth of 6,000 metres in the ocean with a suite of scientific sensors and tools.
• An Integrated Mining System will be also developed for mining polymetallic nodules at those depths in the central Indian Ocean.
• Polymetallic nodules are rocks scattered on the seabed containing iron, manganese, nickel and cobalt.
• The exploration studies of minerals will pave the way for commercial exploitation in the near future, as and when commercial exploitation code is evolved by the International Seabed Authority, an United Nations (UN) organisation.
• 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.
• 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.
• Deep Ocean Survey and Exploration:
• It will explore and identify potential sites of multi-metal Hydrothermal Sulphides mineralization along the Indian Ocean mid-oceanic ridges.
• Energy and Freshwater from the Ocean:
• Studies and detailed engineering design for offshore Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) powered desalination plants are envisaged in this proof of concept proposal.
• OTEC is a technology which uses ocean temperature differences from the surface to depths lower than 1,000 meters, to extract energy.
• Advanced Marine Station for Ocean Biology:
• It is aimed at the development of human capacity and enterprise in ocean biology and engineering.
• It will translate research into industrial application and product development through on-site business incubator facilities.

Significance of the Mission:

• The ‘Deep Ocean Mission’ plan will enable India to develop capabilities to exploit resources in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB).
• India has been allotted 75,000 square kilometres in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) by UN International Sea Bed Authority for exploration of poly-metallic nodules.
• CIOB reserves contain deposits of metals like iron, manganese, nickel and cobalt.

Potential:

• 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.