Ocean, polar and earth science missions

Prelims and Mains

The Deep Ocean Mission, begun in 2021 under the Ministry of Earth Sciences with Rs 4,077 crore, develops the technology for exploring and using the deep sea. It runs six verticals: a crewed submersible and mining technology, ocean climate advisory services, deep sea biodiversity, surveys of the seabed for minerals, ocean energy and desalination from deep water, and a marine station for ocean biology. It is reported as a mining programme, but mining is one vertical of six, and the mission's surveys of life on the seabed are what any later mining will be judged against.

• Ocean thermal energy conversion, power from the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water, is the energy vertical.

Prelims and Mains

Samudrayaan is the mission's crewed deep sea programme and Matsya6000 the submersible built for it by the National Institute of Ocean Technology: a titanium sphere carrying three people to 6,000 metres, the depth at which India's nodule field lies, with 12 hours of endurance and 96 hours of emergency life support. A crewed dive lets scientists see and sample what a remotely operated vehicle can only film.

Prelims and Mains

The mission reads the Indian Ocean floor for life as much as for metal, and the two turn up in the same places: seamounts, underwater mountains that never reach the surface, and mid ocean ridges, where hydrothermal vents release mineral rich hot water around which dense communities live. A species list is the baseline against which any loss from mining can later be measured.

Prelims and Mains

Two kinds of deposit are worth going to the ocean floor for, and they form in different places. Polymetallic nodules, potato sized lumps rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper, settle grain by grain over millions of years on flat abyssal plains at 4,000 to 6,000 metres. Polymetallic sulphides are thrown out at hydrothermal vents along the ridges where plates pull apart, and carry copper, zinc, gold and silver. Cobalt rich crusts on seamounts are the third type. The figure compares them.

Prelims and Mains

India explores the seabed under three International Seabed Authority contracts: one for polymetallic nodules in the Central Indian Ocean Basin, held since 2002, and two for polymetallic sulphides, on the Central and Southwest Indian Ridge and on the Carlsberg Ridge in the Arabian Sea, which made India the first country to hold two. Exploration is survey and test mining; commercial mining waits on the ISA's exploitation code. The Ministry of Earth Sciences and the National Institute of Ocean Technology are now inviting private industry in, and a White Paper on Deep Sea Mining is to set the terms.

Prelims and Mains

Beyond any country's waters the seabed belongs to no one and its minerals to everyone, and a single body in Kingston, Jamaica decides who may go down.

• The International Seabed Authority (ISA), set up under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), regulates mineral activity in the Area and grants exploration contracts.
• Its Exploitation Code has not been adopted, which is why India's contracts stretch to survey and test work and no further.

Prelims and Mains

The case against going down is that the damage does not stay where the machine is. The mission's own species lists are part of the answer, since a loss can only be measured against a record of what was there.

• Removing nodules destroys slow growing habitats that may take very long to recover.
• Sediment plumes and noise can spread damage well beyond the mined site.

Prelims and Mains

The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services runs India's ocean observing network of buoys, current profilers, tide gauges and Argo floats, and its tsunami warning system issues an advisory within ten minutes of an undersea earthquake.

Prelims and Mains

The National Seismological Network records India's earthquakes, and the Kangra and Chamba belt of Himachal Pradesh lies in the highest seismic hazard zone on the Bureau of Indian Standards map.

Mains

India has been an observer at the Arctic Council since 2013, a status that gives no part in decisions, and runs the Himadri research station at Svalbard under its Arctic Policy of 2022.

Prelims and Mains

Seafloor rifting is the pulling apart of the ocean floor at a plate boundary, and sensors in the Indian Ocean have recorded such an event as it happened, with the seafloor sinking and spreading with little seismic activity.